Hercules and the Augean Stables

"Ladies and gentlemen, that our bare boards should represent the world may surprise you, and our only excuse is that there is no other way theatrically." Polibius, who is Hercules' downtrodden secretary, event arranger, and fee collector, begins thus to the audience, continuing, "We will try to tell a story which no one has dared to put on the stage before because it deals with man's zeal for cleanliness at war with his quest for art."

Polibius is shivering on Mount Olympus as Hercules, the national hero, is about to conclude his fourth labor. Unfortunately the fees for slaying bandits and prehistoric monsters have fallen off, and Hercules in now deeply in debt. With no alternative, he must accept his fifth labor—cleaning out the mountains of manure that are engulfing the land Elis. His first thought is to dam the rivers and sluce the dung into the ocean, but this would pollute the entire Ionic Sea. Hercules quickly discovers, as have others since, that it's a lot easier to accumulate manure than it is to get rid of it. And the twin serpents he strangled as a child were truly "childs play" compared with the bureaucratic red tape that now strangles every effort he makes to help.

Augeas, the astute local politician who imported Hercules, is also at the mercy of his legislature which has a thousand ways and reasons for making their survival impossible. The frustrated Hercules is forced to accept a job in a circus lifting stupendous weights for trivial fees while Augeas comes to the rather sophisicated conclusion that, " You cannot enforce enlightenment upon the world, but you can prepare the way for it. So that when it comes it will be reflected in you."

This is a witty and pointed play which creates a special style of its own.