Playwright Kate Hamill fell in love with Homer’s “The Odyssey” as a kid. Before Hamill could even read, her father was telling her tales of brave Odysseus and his confrontations with sea monsters and cyclops.

“I was three, four years old, which is kind of cracked,” Hamill told the Herald with a laugh. “As a little kid, you think of them as fantastic adventure stories and not about the broader scope of them.”

In 2016, she began to think about those broader meanings. What are the costs of war for the warriors and those left at home? How does a cycle of violence perpetuate itself? And what exactly did Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, do over the 20-year span when her husband was off sacking Troy and taking on those monsters?

In her new adaptation of “The Odyssey,” Hamill gets at these questions (and plenty more) — the show runs Feb. 9 to March 16 at the American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Drama Center.

For those who need a quick refresher, Homer’s epic takes place after the decade-long Trojan War during Greek hero Odysseus’ decade-long journey to get back home. But don’t expect a faithful retelling. No matter the source material, “Sense and Sensibility” or “Dracula” or the grandest Greek myth, Hamill always adds a few twists.

“The whole play is framed by these three women who rise out of the ashes of Troy and haunt Odysseus and drive the story forward,” Hamill said. “In terms of scope and spectacle, it’s the biggest play I have done so we have giant cyclops who eat people and sirens and shipwrecks and magic… It’s very theatrical, it’s feminist…so there are some things people will recognize and parts that are quite different.”

Under the “quite different” category is the expanded role of Penelope.

“Ever since I was old enough to think about it, I never believed that Penelope just sat around weaving and unweaving for 20 years, so I wanted to give her a whole arc and journey,” Hamill said. “In some ways, I was creating two plays that interweave with each other.”

“It’s a challenge to make sure the audience is engaged in these two people’s life journeys, along with a huge cast of characters and a lot of different settings,” she added.

It’s been nearly ten years since Hamill first started her adaptation — about the time it took Odysseus to get home. In that time, the world has changed and changed again. Now the play opens during the dawn of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

“When I started this play, I thought it was about the fall of a civilization, but it’s about how you survive, how you get back to yourself and move forward when your society, your civilization, is really changing,” she said. “Part of why we try to find joy and humor and hope in this story, while not looking away from the violence and trauma, is because we find that life does keep going.”

For tickets and details, visit americanrepertorytheater.org