'The Odyssey' is cool, but this Tampa actress is doing a one-woman musical from Penelope’s perspective - Florida News Beep

Guys everywhere are getting hard for Matt Damon in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” but this is a chance to grab a drink and get a woman’s perspective on Homer’s epic in the flesh.

To close its 27th season, Jobsite Theater has tapped Colleen Cherry for a folk-pop, one-woman musical, where Penelope—wife of Odysseus, mom to Telemachus, and queen of Ithaca—is backed by strings, piano and drum as she tells the audience about loneliness and self-reliance. Interest in this southern U.S. premiere of the work by Alex Bechtel, Grace McLean, and Eva Steinmetz has already forced Jobsite to add Saturday matinees, with a special preview set for Wednesday night at the Shimberg Playhouse.

And unlike Nolan, who takes 172 minutes away from your life, Cherry & co. (including director Katherine Yacko and choreographer Alexander Jones) need just 90 minutes to say their piece.

Jobsite Theater’s “Penelope: An Epic New Musical” is at Tampa’s Shimberg Playhouse at David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts select days and nights Aug. 21-Sept. 6, and tickets start at $50.

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This article appears in August 13 – 19, 2026.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief…
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‘The Odyssey’ is cool, but this Tampa actress is doing a one-woman musical from Penelope’s perspective

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