(L-R) Michael Gregory, Kayah Bonilla-Mas and Jill Schroeder in ‘Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike’ at Off-Central Players in St. Petersburg, Florida. Credit: Chaz D. Photography
Let’s be honest: when most Tampa Bay residents think about live theater, they tend to split into two camps. Either you’re dropping half a paycheck at a mega-arts center to sit in row ZZ where the actors look like dressed-up LEGO figures, or you’re dodging local theater altogether out of a lingering fear of awkward community hall productions.
Enter The Off-Central Players, who are currently staging a quiet revolution—and a deliciously noisy farce—right in the heart of St. Petersburg’s Grand Central District.
Launching their sixth season with Christopher Durang’s Tony Award-winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Off-Central is doing something absurdly ambitious.
Managing director Alan Mohney, Jr. openly admits this is the largest production the company has ever mounted. Putting a sprawling, physical, emotional high-wire act inside an intimate 43-seat black box theater is the theatrical equivalent of trying to parallel park a monster truck inside a studio apartment.
And that is precisely why you should care.
This post first appeared at TB Arts Passport, which is part of the Tampa Bay Journalism Project (TBJP), a nascent Creative Loafing Tampa Bay effort supported by grants and a coalition of donors who make specific contributions via the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation. If you are a non-paywalled Bay area publication interested in TBJP, please email [email protected]. Support TB Arts Passport by subscribing to its free newsletter or becoming a paying Arts Passport Member.
High culture without the pretension
You don’t need a master’s degree in Russian literature to get this show. While Durang’s script throws classic Chekhovian themes—sibling rivalry, existential regret, middle-aged despair—into a comedic blender, it’s designed to hit you right in the gut.
As first-time Off-Central actor Eve Grissinger (Nina) points out, the play walks a precarious tightrope between heartbreak and absurdity.
Director Dylan Barlowe deliberately leans into the laughs right from the opening beats to give the audience permission to relax. Once that guard is down, the show ping-pongs seamlessly between sorrow and hilarity, anchored by powerhouse moments like Vanya’s (Michael Gregory) culture-critiquing monologue—a beast of a speech that Gregory masterfully grounds by “making the unfamiliar familiar.”
The result is theater that invites you in rather than talks down to you.
The front-row ‘4-D’ experience
What makes live theater in St. Pete special isn’t grand scale; it’s proximity. In a 43-seat room, there is nowhere for an actor to hide, and no barrier between you and the story.
Cast member Will Rickard (Spike) jokes that the space is so intimate, “I can wipe sweat from my brow and if I’m not careful, the front row might get a 4-D experience.”
That extreme proximity transforms the audience from passive spectators into active conspirators in the room’s energy. When cast member Jill Schroeder (Sonia) talks about how the cast bonded early on through shared laughter, that genuine warmth radiates straight into your seat.
As actor Tracey Reynolds (Masha) hopes, you’ll leave the theater still laughing on the drive home—but also reflecting on the idea that it’s never too late to let go of regret and start a new chapter.
St. Pete doesn’t need another sanitized touring show. It needs fearless, high-stakes local art happening three feet from your face.
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This article appears in Sept. 17 – 23, 2026.
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