Stripping the Hollywood Gloss Off 'The Notebook'
by Avery Anderson
If you’ve ever driven the I-4 corridor between Orlando and Tampa after midnight, you know it feels a bit like limbo—a stretch of darkness connecting two entirely different worlds. For Chloë Cheers and the cast of The Notebook, that drive marks a major milestone. Fresh off their Orlando run, the company is unpacking their trunks at the Straz Center next week, bringing the massive Broadway tour to Tampa’s Morsani Hall for the very first time.
When Chloë logs onto our Zoom call, there’s none of that post-show, mid-tour exhaustion you’d expect from an actor living out of a suitcase. Instead, she radiates the kind of grounded, kinetic energy of someone who genuinely loves the heavy lifting of live theater.
And it is heavy lifting. Chloë has been with this tour since its inception, steering the character of Younger Allie across the country. But for those expecting a carbon copy of the Nicholas Sparks book or the iconic 2004 film, the musical adaptation (featuring a score by indie-pop darling Ingrid Michaelson and a book by This Is Us writer Bekah Brunstetter) introduces a totally different theatrical language.
Instead of a linear timeline, the show employs a striking device: three different actors play Allie and Noah at different stages of their lives, often sharing the stage at the exact same time. Chloë is tasked with capturing the lightning-in-a-bottle velocity of teenage, first love. But she isn't acting in a vacuum—she is constantly observing her counterparts, matching their inflections and physical mannerisms to ensure they feel like one continuous soul.
It creates a profound emotional paradox. While the movie settled comfortably into Hollywood romance history, the musical forces the audience to sit with the messy coexistence of radical joy and crushing sadness. You watch Chloë embody the euphoric, butterfly-inducing highs of youth, while just a few feet away, Older Allie struggles with the realities of memory loss.
Theater strips away the cinematic gloss and the editing tricks, leaving just the actors, the music, and the collective intake of breath in a dark room. As the trucks roll into Tampa, the cast isn't just bringing a commercial hit to Morsani Hall; they’re bringing a reminder of what makes live performance vital. In a culture that tries to sanitize our feelings into neat, scrollable boxes, The Notebook asks us to walk into the theater and willingly feel everything at once.
On Our Radar
The Notebook
- When/Where: May 26–31, 2026 | Morsani Hall at the Straz Center, Tampa
- Why it matters: Forget what you think you know about this story from the movie. With Ingrid Michaelson’s raw, introspective score and a brilliant multi-generational staging device, this production transforms a familiar tearjerker into a masterclass on the persistence of memory and human connection. Bring tissues; you’ll need them.