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<\/p>\nColleen Cherry swears that the powers-that-be at Jobsite Theater didn\u2019t know about the big film adaptation of The Odyssey when they planned the last show for the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n
The Christopher Nolan-directed movie opened, to great success, in mid July. This week, it\u2019s still No. 2 at the box office. Jobsite\u2019s play, the one-woman musical Penelope, debuts Aug. 19.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Of course, the source material for all of this was the ancient Greek epic poem\u00a0by a guy called Homer.<\/p>\n
D\u2019oh!<\/p>\n
\u201cNow there\u2019s all this buzz about the movie,\u201d says Cherry, the one woman at the center of the Jobsite production. \u201cAnd we are selling tickets. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s because of that movie \u2026 but we\u2019ll take it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cherry, one of Jobsite\u2019s artistic associates, has performed in many of the company\u2019s 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\u2019s musical director Jeremy Douglass, for a what-do-you-think?<\/p>\n
Cherry couldn\u2019t say yes fast enough.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been a nerd for The Odyssey since I was a little kid,\u201d she reports. \u201cI first read it in elementary school. I went through my Greek mythology phase and just never left it.\u201d<\/p>\n
A particular favorite, she volunteers, was the 1997 Odyssey miniseries starring Armand Assante, Greta Scacchi and Bernadette Peters.<\/p>\n
Historically, Penelope remains a figure shrouded in myth and literary conjecture. \u201cOdysseus goes off and has his adventure, and she\u2019s at home,\u201d Cherry explains. \u201cShe\u2019s raising their kid \u2013 a single mom! \u2013 and she\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that\u2019s pretty much all we knew. And she cries a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cPenelope\u201d co-writer Grace McLean performed the show at Joe\u2019s Pub in New York. Screengrab.<\/p>\n
Bechtel\u2019s adaptation takes a few liberties with the Homeric story. With a five-piece chamber orchestra onstage behind her, Penelope sings \u2013 and talks \u2013 directly to the audience. \u201cAt its core,\u201d Cherry says, \u201cit is true storytelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just not the story in the way Homer, or Christopher Nolan, told it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a more modern spin, so I\u2019m 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\u2019t read The Iliad, or The Odyssey, or maybe didn\u2019t see the Christopher Nolan film. They can skip it. I fill them in on the whole context.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cherry credits director Katherine Yacko with keeping the narrative-with-music moving. \u201cIt\u2019s very funny, but then on a dime it\u2019ll turn into this heartbreaking, gut-wrenching emotional moment,\u201d the actress explains. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the beauty of the writing. You feel for her.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you feel her rage. I get to be a little rage-y.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Jobsite\u2019s season unspooled in real time, Cherry got married. And waited for Penelope rehearsals to begin. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve waited 20 years for this,\u201d she says. \u201cWe even went to Greece as part of our honeymoon earlier this year \u2013 so I am in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n