Stone Arch Players present ‘The Sweet Delilah Swim Club’
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LEWISTOWN -- Ditch your spouse, grab a friend and be prepared to laugh with the girls of "The Sweet Delilah Swim Club" in the latest Stone Arch Players' theatrical production.
Premiering on Friday, May 3, this is a dramatic comedy -- filled with drama constant laughs -- about five southern women, whose friendships began many years ago on a championship college swim team, set aside a long weekend every August to recharge these relationships.
Free from husbands, kids and jobs, they keep their lifelong friendships and reunite annually in a little beach cottage, the "Sweet Delilah" on North Carolina's Outer Banks to catch up, laugh and meddle in each other's lives. It is about true friendships and how they grow.
Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten wrote this two-act, four-scene play. Directed by the Stone Arch Players' Colette Hartzler, "The Sweet Delilah Swim Club" focuses on four of these weekends and spans a period of 35 years. The audience almost becomes that sixth friend as the story makes you feel like one of the gang as you get to know each character and their storyline. Alicia Hartzler serves as stage manager for the Stone Arch Players.
These five friends couldn't be more distinctly different from each other. That is another beauty in the show: despite their differences, they never get in the way of their friendships and love for each other, and the actresses have great chemistry.
Nicole Homan couldn't be more perfect as the wise-cracking, hard-drinking career driven Dinah Grayson, an attorney who is the rock for everyone in the group. A career dynamo, her victories in the courtroom are in stark contrast to the frustrations of her personal life.
Chris Woods precisely plays spunky team captain Sheree Hollinger, the micromanaging friend who drives everyone crazy with a schedule. A proper type A personality, she desperately tries to maintain her organized and "perfect" life and continues to be the group leader.
Actress Jessica Filson is a believable Lexie Richard. Pampered and outspoken, Lexie is a friend who wants to defy aging and always looks the best and fights the fierce war against aging. Her self-centered attitude slowly withers with age.
It was a real treat to see Marsha Sharp as the hilarious down-on-her-luck Vernadette Simms, perhaps the funniest character in the show. The self-deprecating and acerbic Vernadette, who is acutely aware of the dark cloud that hovers over her life, has decided to just give in and embrace the chaos.
Finally, Dena Stauffer plays the sweet and eager-to-please Jeri Neal McFeeley, formerly known as Sister Mary Esther, a nun who becomes pregnant after leaving the convent. Imagine the fun this character brings to the stage that takes everyone by surprise.
As their lives unfold and the years pass, the five women increasingly rely on one another, through advice and raucous repartee, to get through the various challenges -- men, sex, marriage, parenting, divorce and aging -- that life flings at them.
And when fate throws a wrench into one of their lives in the second act, these friends rally with the strength and love that takes this comedy in a poignant and surprising direction.
"A great show for all," Hartzler said. "But especially enjoyable to those who have a group of friends, who like 'The Sweet Delilah Swim Club,' have kept in touch for much of their life."
General admission tickets cost $12. The showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, May 3-4, 10-11 and 17-18 and 2 p.m. Sundays, May 12 and 19.
For tickets, call (717) 248-2224 or e-mail tickets4sap@gmail.com.