Upstate Perseus

Upstate Perseus is a play in four scenes, inspired by the ancient Greek myth of Perseus. A boy is raised by a single mother, grows to manhood and undertakes the dangerous mission of bringing down a possibly mythical beast; along the way he rescues a beautiful girl from another kind of beast, accidentally kills his father, and returns home to kill, perhaps by accident, a tyrant who has been oppressing his mother. This version of the ancient myth is set in upstate New York and along the Canadian border and features teenage characters who happen to bear those powerful names, Perseus and Andromeda. And there’s an an Athena who runs a diner and a Hermes who works as a delivery man. No one rides on Pegasus, though, and Medusa doesn't exactly turn anyone to stone. Otherwise the plot, through a series of remarkable coincidences, recreates the events of an ancient myth in the 1970s.