Colleen Cherry swears that the powers-that-be at Jobsite Theater didn’t know about the big film adaptation of The Odyssey when they planned the last show for the 2025-26 season.
The Christopher Nolan-directed movie opened, to great success, in mid July. This week, it’s still No. 2 at the box office. Jobsite’s play, the one-woman musical Penelope, debuts Aug. 19.
It’s taken from The Odyssey, in which Penelope, the wife of wandering hero Odysseus, is forced to wait 20 years for his return from the Trojan War. She must rule the kingdom of Ithica in his absence.
Of course, the source material for all of this was the ancient Greek epic poem by a guy called Homer.
D’oh!
“Now there’s all this buzz about the movie,” says Cherry, the one woman at the center of the Jobsite production. “And we are selling tickets. I don’t know if it’s because of that movie … but we’ll take it.”
Cherry, one of Jobsite’s artistic associates, has performed in many of the company’s musicals over the past decade. When artistic director David Jenkins found Penelope, written by Alex Bechtel, with Grace McLean and Eva Steinmetz, he presented it to Cherry and Jobsite’s musical director Jeremy Douglass, for a what-do-you-think?
Cherry couldn’t say yes fast enough.
“I’ve been a nerd for The Odyssey since I was a little kid,” she reports. “I first read it in elementary school. I went through my Greek mythology phase and just never left it.”
A particular favorite, she volunteers, was the 1997 Odyssey miniseries starring Armand Assante, Greta Scacchi and Bernadette Peters.
Historically, Penelope remains a figure shrouded in myth and literary conjecture. “Odysseus goes off and has his adventure, and she’s at home,” Cherry explains. “She’s raising their kid – a single mom! – and she’s running Ithica herself. While outsmarting these suitors, these dudes who just show up at her house and want to marry her. But she uses her weaving to stave them off.
“And that’s pretty much all we knew. And she cries a lot.”
Bechtel’s adaptation takes a few liberties with the Homeric story. With a five-piece chamber orchestra onstage behind her, Penelope sings – and talks – directly to the audience. “At its core,” Cherry says, “it is true storytelling.”
Just not the story in the way Homer, or Christopher Nolan, told it.
“It’s a more modern spin, so I’m not speaking in any kind of archaic, ancient Greek rhythms. I get to drop a couple F-bombs. She gets a little tipsy, and gives the context for The Iliad, for anyone who didn’t read The Iliad, or The Odyssey, or maybe didn’t see the Christopher Nolan film. They can skip it. I fill them in on the whole context.”
Cherry credits director Katherine Yacko with keeping the narrative-with-music moving. “It’s very funny, but then on a dime it’ll turn into this heartbreaking, gut-wrenching emotional moment,” the actress explains. “And that’s the beauty of the writing. You feel for her.
“And you feel her rage. I get to be a little rage-y.”
While Jobsite’s season unspooled in real time, Cherry got married. And waited for Penelope rehearsals to begin. “I feel like I’ve waited 20 years for this,” she says. “We even went to Greece as part of our honeymoon earlier this year – so I am in it.
“I’m so excited that after sitting on it for a year, and singing it to my dog and my husband, now I get to collaborate with all of the brilliant people who are involved in this production.”
Performed in the Shimberg Playhouse (Straz Center, Tampa) Penelope has preview performances Aug. 19 and 20. Official opening night is Aug. 21. For all showtimes and tickets, visit this link.
This content provided in partnership with StPeteCatalyst.com
