“My mother, Alcmene, loved my mortal father Amphitryon, but she would not have him in her bed until he’d avenged the deaths of her brothers, so while he was away, Zeus came to mother, disguised as Amphitryon, and fathered me.

Nevertheless, in his huge, deep voice, as Bodkin plays 12-string guitar, Hercules begins his story: Does he give the full truth, or just his point of view? In places it’s hard to tell. Hercules is reluctant to tell his story, because his life tallies just as many foul murders as glorious acts, but he tells it anyway, just to be able to leave. This is Odds Bodkin’s dramatic setting for the myth of Hercules, a storytelling work originally commissioned by The Art Institute of Chicago for an exhibition of Greek art. Olympus until Hercules tells both her and her husband his life story.

And so when Hercules, freshly dead, drops down before her, she won’t let him proceed to his final resting place on Mt. Trapped in the Underworld with him, she longs for news of the living world.

Of course, Persephone, Queen of the Dead, despises her husband Hades. Where does he do this? In the Underworld, a place he is shocked to find himself. In tonight’s performance of HERCULES IN HELL, Hercules tells his own life story shortly after his death.

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