[NEohioPAL] Review of "The Dixie Swim Club" at CVLT

[Bob Abelman]

CVLT's 'The Dixie Swim Club' offers southern comfort

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald 6/11/10

There is something very familiar about The Dixie Swim Club, currently in production at the Chagrin Valley Little Theater.

 

This delightful comedy, written by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten, certainly bares a strong resemblance to the play Steel Magnolias in its depiction of Southern charm, its blending of broad humor, thick sentimentality and heart-wrenching pathos, and its female-centric orientation.

 

The play explores the lives of five girlfriends who met on their college swim team.  They now meet each year at the same beach cottage on North Carolina's Outer Banks to drink, swim, drink and support each other through life's unpredictable twists and turns.

 

The Dixie Swim Club also resembles Same Time, Next Year in that it spans these friends' adult lives and drops in on them periodically, at first depicting the women at 44, then 49, then 54 and finally when they reach senior citizenry and the golden age of 77. 

 

The play also hints of TV's The Golden Girls.  True to ensemble sitcom casting, each character is a type-a caricature-that conflicts with the others for broad comedic effect but shares uncompromising friendship, which serves as the unbreakable bond between them and supplies the drama.

 

Sheree, played by Jackie Cassara, is the steadfast team captain and unflappable group organizer.  Dinah, played by Chris White, is the aggressive, hard-drinking career woman.  Lexie has never met a mirror or a man she didn't like, and is portrayed by Denise Bernstein.  Kate Tonti, as Vernadette, is the human version of a black cat spilling salt while walking under a ladder, arriving each year with increasingly improbable injuries and personal tribulations.  Jeri Neal, played by Jenny Barrett, is a lapsed nun making up for lost time. 

  

There is comfort in familiarity yet, in the capable hands of veteran director Barbara Rhoades, this play is certainly more than the sum of its used parts.  Rhoades has wisely assembled a uniformly marvelous cast that brings these five characters to life and makes them interesting and inviting.

 

Each actress takes risks that pay huge dividends.  There's Barrett's ex-sister phone sex, Bernstein's full-throttled seductiveness, Tonti's Buster Keaton-esque stone-faced delivery of the play's best one-liners, White's binge drinking but continued likability, and Cassara's iron maiden moments of vulnerability. 

 

Edmond Wolff has constructed a very comfortable rental cottage for this production.  The minor set changes that take place there, between the four scenes that depict these women in different stages of life, are filled with anticipation; evidence that the audience genuinely cares about these characters and has fully invested in their storylines and relationships. Not an easy thing to achieve in a comedy or with men in attendance.

 

The Dixie Swim Club is a delightful respite; the stage equivalent of a summer beach cottage.  With a remarkable view.

 

The Dixie Swim Club continues through June 26 at the Chagrin Valley Little Theatre, 56 River Street, Chagrin Falls.  For tickets, which are $12 to $16, call 440-247-8955 or visit www.cvlt.org.

 

Reader feedback is welcome.  Visit www.news-herald.com and type "Abelman" in the search window.

 

 
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