Two-time Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz has been playing Hermes in Hadestown at the Walter Kerr Theatre since September 1, as part of a new principal company that also brought in Jasmin Savoy Brown, Kayko, Amber Iman and Ben Davis.
It is the first Broadway role for Butz since January 2019, when he left Lincoln Center Theater’s revival of My Fair Lady, in which he played Alfred P. Doolittle. Hermes is the musical’s narrator, the figure who sets the story going and steers Orpheus through it.
Butz is one of only nine actors to have won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical twice, first for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and then for Catch Me If You Can. He was also nominated for Thou Shalt Not and My Fair Lady. His Broadway debut came in Rent, he was the original Fiyero in Wicked, and his other New York credits include Big Fish, Enron, Speed-the-Plow, Is He Dead? and The Last Five Years. Most recently he played Paul Child in The Recipe at La Jolla Playhouse.
The rest of the new principal company started the same night. Kayko plays Orpheus, Jasmin Savoy Brown is Eurydice, Amber Iman is Persephone and Ben Davis is Hades. Davis took the role after Geno Segers, who was first announced for Hades, left the production by mutual agreement in August. The Fates are Kelly Belarmino, KC Dela Cruz and Khori Michelle Petinaud.
They took over from John-Michael Lyles, Jordan Tyson, J. Harrison Ghee, Gaby Moreno and Gary Dourdan, who played their final performances on August 30.
Anaïs Mitchell’s retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice began as a small touring theater project in Vermont and became a concept album before Rachel Chavkin directed it for the stage. It opened at the Walter Kerr on April 17, 2019, won eight Tony Awards including Best Musical, and is now in its eighth year there.
Hadestown runs at the Walter Kerr Theatre, 219 West 48th Street. No end date has been announced for the new company. Tickets are sold through the production’s official site, hadestown.com.
