Written by Lily Amback / News & Opinion editor
This year’s play, “Pandemonium,” was a murder mystery focused on Roman and Greek gods.
The plot of “Pandemonium” started when Minerva, the main character, goddess of wisdom, and personal investigator, is told by Mars, the god of war and NYPD officer, and Kid Mercury, the messenger god and hospital staff that their father, Zeus, was murdered.
Pluto, Zeus’ brother, was the first and obvious suspect, so Minerva went straight to his wife, Persephone, to question.
This is when Minerva found out that Venus and Bacchus, two more gods, were planning a party to honor Zeus. She attends this party but leaves before the next murder could occur.
During Pluto’s speech to honor Zeus, he mysteriously collapses and dies. Kid Mercury and Minerva’s mortal assistant, Alex, are sent to get Neptune, Zeus’ and Pluto’s brother, as they fear he could be a potential target.
The last god was revealed in a twist. Minerva used to be a detective for the NYPD, until she made a fatal mistake and her partner Paul was killed. Paul was revealed to be the last god, Apollo.
Minerva, Mars, Kid Mercury and Alex all go back to Minerva’s workplace to regroup when the known antagonist, Styx, comes in with Bacchus.
Bacchus and Styx reveal that they murdered the two gods to release “Pandemonium,” which roughly translates to total chaos. It is also revealed that Bacchus killed Apollo five years ago because he was going to bust him for running an illegal bootlegging business.
Bacchus poisons Minerva in an attempt to kill her, and Bacchus and Styx run away. Kid Mercury saves Minerva, and Minerva goes to confront Bacchus and Styx. Minerva ultimately turns Bacchus’ plan against him and Artemis, the director of the FBI, takes them in and arrests them.
I really enjoyed this show. Neptune had some really funny lines and I just liked his character in general.
My friends, family, and I are really into mythology, so the shifting names really annoyed me. Most gods were referred to by their Roman names, such as Minerva, Mars, Mercury, Pluto, Venus, Bacchus and Neptune. Apollo is both the Greek and Roman name for the sun god, so this one was also fine.
But, then there were many gods referred to by their Greek names, like Zeus, Persephone and Artemis. This made it increasingly confusing to me because the different versions of these gods, while having the same powers, have different personalities.
Not to mention, at an early point in the play, when Alex was discovering that the gods were real, he said “Zeus, Poseiden and Hades,” which was confusing since Poseidon and Hades were referred throughout the play as Neptune and Pluto.
However, I do realize that most audience members are not as well versed in Greek and Roman mythology as myself, so this was probably not as much of a hindrance to the average watcher.
I really enjoyed the play, but my favorite part of it was playing detective myself. My family and friends attempted to guess who the murderer was halfway through the play at intermission.
Some theories thrown out were that it was the mortal Alex because he seemed sketchy. This was incredibly funny to me because I thought the actor for Alex did a wonderful job and was well-suited for that role.
Another idea that was said was Zeus faked his own death to teach his family a lesson and killed Pluto because of their long-standing rivalry in Greek mythology. I especially liked this idea and would have liked to see it played out.
However, I also put out my own conspiracy. I thought that Bacchus was a likely candidate for the murders since at the party before Pluto died, he did a little party trick where he turned supposedly nasty wine into great wine.
Honestly, as the play went on, I thought that the Zeus option was more likely than mine, but I was very happy to brag that I got it right after all.