Norbert Leo Butz Is Back on Broadway and Preaching the Gospel of Hadestown

Norbert Leo Butz has spent 30 years collecting the kind of Broadway credits that make theater fans speak his name with reverence, including Rent and Wicked. Along the way, he earned two Tony Awards: for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Catch Me If You Can. Recently, though, the 59-year-old actor had started to wonder whether Broadway might be in his rearview mirror. It turns out, Hadestown was marching behind him all along. Now starring as Hermes at the Walter Kerr Theatre, Butz sat down with Broadway.com Editor-in-Chief Paul Wontorek to talk about returning to Broadway after seven years, finding his inner preacher and why he's still got plenty left to do.

Joining a long-running musical wasn't exactly part of Butz's plan. “If you'd asked me a year ago, or I don't know, six months ago even, ‘Would I go into a long-running Broadway musical?’ I'd probably say no,” he says. But Hadestown was different. Butz had been a fan since seeing the original company shortly after the musical opened, initially drawn to it by his longtime friend and early acting hero Patrick Page, who originated the role of Hades. “I started off as just a super fan,” Butz says.

One thing that changed his mind was the chance to enter the show alongside an entirely new group of principals: Kayko as Orpheus, Jasmin Savoy Brown as Eurydice, Amber Iman as Persephone and Ben Davis as Hades. “I can't see myself showing up and rehearsing alone with a stage manager,” Butz says. “That's too lonely, but you come in as an ensemble and learn it all together. It's a game changer.”

The role also arrived when Butz was reevaluating his relationship to Broadway. After nearly a decade away, he had begun focusing more on film, television and teaching as stage roles became harder to find. “I thought it was really maybe kind of done for me,” he says. That changed while working on a play with Hadestown's Tony-nominated choreographer David Neumann and Tony-winning scenic designer Rachel Hauck. Conversations about Butz's love for the musical planted an idea. “I saw a glint in David's eye, like, ‘You'd be a really good Hermes,’” he recalls. “The penny kind of dropped for me, and I was like, ‘I do think I could do that part.’”

For Butz, accepting the role of Hermes meant letting go of any stigma around replacing. “It became important for me to just say, ‘Hey, somebody's giving me this opportunity,’” he says. “It's a masterpiece of a show. It's an incredible part. I get to do everything that I love to do. I get to dance.” Approaching his 60th birthday in January hasn't slowed him down either. As Butz puts it, “Still shaking my ass.”

Butz isn't interested in solely looking back on his career. “People want to talk about the past a lot, which is great. But I still have ambitions,” he says. “I have stuff I want to do that's still ahead of me. Hadestown is kind of like a forward-stepping place for me, even though I'm stepping into a long-running show.”

Finding his own Hermes wasn't straightforward. Butz had seen Tony winner André De Shields originate the role, watched jazz great Kurt Elling take it on and knew his friend Daniel Breaker had also stepped into Hermes' heeled boots. “I was like, ‘What can I do that these genius guys haven't already done?’” he says. Two weeks into rehearsal, he called Breaker in a panic. “I said, ‘I'm so bad. I'm terrible. I'm gonna get fired.’” Breaker reassured him that Hermes' essential scene partner—the audience—wouldn't arrive until performances begin.

Butz eventually found another way into the role. Raised by devout Christian parents, he spent years watching pastors, preachers and ministers command a room. Hermes' charisma suddenly felt familiar. “He's a shaman. He's a mentor. He is a great communicator. He's very charismatic,” Butz says. “And I thought, ‘Oh, this reminds me of some of these Southern Baptist preachers that I was raised listening to.’ They know how to tell a story. They can create a narrative. They can get all eyes on them and they can sell it, you know? And so I've tried to bring some of that energy into it.”

That preacherly spirit meets a company Butz describes as unusually joyful. He's even reunited with dresser Jack Scott, who first worked with him on Thou Shalt Not and later joined him on Wicked, Dead Accounts and Is He Dead? When Butz landed Hadestown, Scott gave him a promising preview. “He said, ‘You're gonna love it here.’ He goes, ‘It's the happiest place on Broadway.’ It really, really is,” Butz says. “It's a super supportive, loving, happy place.”

For all the laughs, Butz sees something deeper behind Hadestown's enduring pull. The musical's darkness only makes its insistence on trying again more meaningful to him. “It is a show that is ultimately about hope and perseverance over oppression, over environmental catastrophe, with this feeling of, we're all in it together,” he says. “It's really dark out there, but we're gonna keep on trying. There's this irrepressible hope at the end of Hadestown.” After 30 years on Broadway, Butz knows something about continuing to tell the story. As Hermes, he's more than happy to lead the congregation.

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