Pandemic or not, it’s been a while since I stepped into the David A. Straz Center for anything. And yesterday, for the first time in more than a year, I went inside for a gathering. Having “Shockheaded Peter” help me back into live theater was a perfect scenario.
Jobsite Theater: ‘Shockheaded Peter’
Every Wednesday-Saturday (8 p.m.) and Sunday (4 p.m.) through Saturday, July 3.
$19.50 & up.
Jaeb Theater at David A. Straz Center for the Performing Arts
1010 N Macinnes Pl, Tampa
813-229-7827. strazcenter.org
Based on a 19th-century German children’s book, “Shockheaded Peter” was first performed in West Yorkshire, England. Jobsite’s first pandemic-induced step out of the Shimberg Playhouse and into the slightly larger Jaeb Theater for more distancing wasn’t soft or demure by any means; in fact, it was amazing, boisterous insanity.
The production is not a play or a musical, but more of a marvelous mixtape cabaret of morbid hilarity.
We first met the emcee played brilliantly gruff-yet-charming by Paul J. Potenza. Potenza’s character broke the fourth wall constantly, interacting with the audience and encouraging singalongs or moments of call and response. Potenza’s improvisational style helped because I couldn’t tell if there were any “mistakes” at the preview show because he made jokes about little incidents and moved right along.
There’s nothing normal about this show—not even the plotline. The play has one main story, and it’s about parents—played by Jobsite’s wonderful Amy E. Gray and Jonathan Harrison—who wish for a child and get instead a little creature puppet delivered by an amazingly garish stork puppet. Intertwined throughout the parents’ journey are musical tales of bad children and the consequences they bring to the family.
The in-between songs—written by the British band The Tiger Lillies—are the party of the performance. Led by the Siren, played by the amazingly talented Spencer Meyers, Jobsite’s audience gets stories of ill-behaved children and what happens to them (usually death). The songs include puppets, singalongs, tap dancing, heart-dropping aerial performances and mirth in spaces. A couple of my favorite tunes were “Snip, Snip”—about a girl who won’t quit sucking her thumbs—and “Fidgety Phil” about a boy, you guessed it, named Phil who won’t stop fidgeting.
On the back of the stage during the entirety of the play stayed the three-piece band consisting of Mark Warren (Vodkanauts), Elwood Bond (Paranoia Dance Party) and led by the incomparable musical director Jeremy Douglass (Florida Bjorkestra). They were the vaudevillian glue holding Peter together. The instruments used include a couple of toy pianos, a flute melodica, a regular melodica,
glockenspiel, organ, bass, bowed saw, otamatone,
Bass ukulele, theremin, mandolin, and banjo with some regular ol’ guitars and drums thrown in.
My heart skipped a few times during the movements of the aerial acrobats. Kasondra Rose and Katrina Stevenson get uncomfortably high while hanging every which way; I dream of that kind of flexibility and upper-arm strength.
Ensemble member Colleen Cherry rounded out the stellar performances with amazing vocal skills, tap dancing and puppet mastery.
Everytime an actor, musician or aerial artist performed I thought, “That’s the star of the show!” Then I realized, the show is the star of the show—the whole colorful, crazy thing. Jobsite’s co-founder and Producing Artistic Director David Jenkins has brought Tampa a marvelous creation, once again.
Editor’s note: With Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s Theater Critic Jon Palmer Claridge recovering from back surgery, CL Wonder Woman Stephanie Powers has stepped in to soak in the local theater scene.
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This article appears in Jun 10-16, 2021.