Everything to Know About Penelope: an Epic New Musical — Cast, Music, and Plot

From major highlights to background context, understand everything about Everything to Know About Penelope: an Epic New Musical — Cast, Music, and Plot in our latest feature.

While Rivera-Herrans conquered the digital streaming charts, a completely different, deeply physical theatrical interpretation captured live theater audiences: Penelope: An Epic New Musical, created by Alex Bechtel alongside Grace McLean and Eva Steinmetz. When Tampa’s Jobsite Theater mounted its production, it turned the Homeric myth into an intimate, roof-shaking rock-and-roll confession.

Jobsite's staging featured Tampa Bay artist Colleen Cherry as Penelope. Backed by a five-piece band consisting of a string quartet and drums, Cherry held the stage alone for 75 minutes without an intermission. The set resembled an abandoned, whiskey-strewn lounge, a palace frozen in an agonizing loop of suspended time. Penelope pours drinks, cracks dark jokes, tunes instruments, and sings her heart out to an absent husband who might already be dead at the bottom of the sea.

Bechtel’s score leans heavily into indie-folk, chamber pop, and theatrical cabaret, contrasting with Rivera-Herrans’ cinematic, orchestral-electronic hybrid. Cherry’s performance was hailed by critics for balancing bitter, biting humor with devastating vulnerability. Rather than relying on Greek choruses or divine intervention, Jobsite’s production proved that a single woman on an empty stage with a microphone can generate all the thunder of an ancient storm.