‘Grace’ notes: Meet the Off-Central’s Sara Nower

If you’re in the audience for Morning After Grace, the new comedy onstage at the Off-Central in St. Petersburg, you’ll notice right away that one of the characters speaks with a pronounced English accent.

It’s not an affectation, and playwright Carey Crim likely didn’t write the character of Abigail that way.

Actress Sara Nower is a born-and-bred Brit who’s been living half of the year here for a decade.

She and husband Mike have a house in the town of Rye, southwest of London on the coast, which is where they spend the other six months.

In both places, live theater is their passion.

“The winter in the U.K. is kind of cold and rainy and windy,” she says. “I mean, it can be lovely – you can’t beat a nice autumnal day in the U.K. – but if it snows, it turns to slush, and gets icy. So the winter sunshine in Florida was always a big draw for us.”

Mike, a retired CFO, had visited the area on a job and took to it immediately. His wife, a retired copy writer, didn’t take much convincing.

“People have said to us ‘Why didn’t you go to Portugal?’” she recalls. “Well, it’s the same language here, nearly, and one of my brothers lives in California, so there is a vague American connection.”

Besides, the couple have made friends here, a lot of friends, most of them in the theater community. Similarly, many of their closest compadres in England are of the theatrical variety, as she acts, and Mike directs, over there are well.

“I’ve been doing this for 30-odd years,” Nower says, “and Mike’s been doing it for longer than me. It’s interesting looking at my Facebook friends – the majority are the people we’ve met through community theater. And that’s what’s kept us here, I think. We’ve all got that common bond. And every year, we make some new theater friends.”

The Off-Central is a professional theater, in that the performers are paid – therefore its requires a higher level of not just ability, but commitment, than community (a.k.a. volunteer) theater.

Both Nowers entered the Pinellas stage universe through St. Pete City Theatre and the Gulfport Community Players. Although he does more directing than acting these days, Mike once played Scrooge in A Christmas Carol at SPCT.

In Morning After Grace, Sara Nower’s Abigail wakes up on a stranger’s sofa, with said stranger snoring next to her. They are each of them barely clothed, hung over and in a state of disbelief.

Angus (Larry Corwin) and Abigail met at a funeral the day before. What happened afterwards is a little fuzzy.

It’s a disarmingly funny show, as Abigail – who’s happens to be a grief counselor – watches as the recently-widowed Angus goes through all the stages, plus a few more he thinks up along the way. Complications arrive when neighbor Ollie (JC Anthony) carries in his own emotional baggage.

Much of the comedy in Morning After Grace – directed by Ward Smith – concerns the trio’s wry observations on the difficulties of getting older.

“Funnily enough,” Nower observes, “I was also a counselor. I trained as a relationship counselor. So when this role came up for a 62-year-old therapist, I was like ‘That’s me!’”

As Margaret Thatcher in “Whiskey & Soda” (with Cody Farkas as John Lennon). Photo provided.

It’s a 180 from her last appearance at the Off-Central. In early 2024’s Whiskey & Soda, she played Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a frosty woman who more than meets her match in wry and spontaneous John Lennon (the meeting never happened in real life, but that’s one of the reasons theater exists). Her husband directed the production, which she had previously done (as a world premiere) in Hastings, U.K.

“It’s daunting,” she admits, “because although you’re not doing a direct impersonation of someone you have to try and do a bit of an impersonation so people know who they are.

“And I had the most amazing wig when we did it over here, by Susan Haldeman. This wig was just stunning. And because of that and the makeup, when I got changed and walked out into the bar area of Off-Central after the show, people didn’t know who I was.

“So it’s quite nice doing this one – people instantly know that I was the person who’d been onstage.”

Morning After Grace is onstage through March 16. For information and tickets, visit the website here.