Possum Point Players Presents DIXIE SWIM CLUB

Grab your beach towel and a refreshing beverage and hit the beach with the Possum Point Players' presentation of "The Dixie Swim Club." Show dates for this funny and poignant play are June 7, 8, 9, 14, 15 and 16. Purchase tickets now to guarantee your favorite beach-side seat; the June 9 matinee is sold out and other performances are going fast.

Friday and Saturday performances are at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday matinees are at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 for adults and $19 for seniors and students and may be purchased at www.possumpointplayers.org or by calling 856-3460.

"The Dixie Swim Club" takes the audience to the Outer Banks of North Carolina where five best friends who bonded in college gather annually to reconnect, relax and get a little rowdy. The play spans four of the weekend reunions, following characters as they advance from young adulthood to their senior years. Along the way, there's plenty of teasing, rehashing old times, sharing accomplishments and some sorrows, and even a flare or two of tempers, as they experience all that real life has to offer, some good and some not so.

Just as in real life, these best friends are all very different individuals. Each is strong and feisty, yet loving and sympathetic and pretty proud of being southern women. Cat Baker plays Sheree who never stopped organizing and scheduling everyone and everything just as she did as swim team captain. From serving up inedible organic hors d'oeuvres to raising perfectly behaved, all-American children, she's always in charge. Until she's not.

Lexie is played by Jill Lewandowski and the flashy character is a successful event planner who has, at one time or another, had everything lifted, tucked or dyed. She "thrives on the lovely things in life," and she changes husbands as quickly as she changes to the latest fashion trend. On the surface, a pampered Southern Bell; inside, there just might be a heart of gold.

Beth DiGrasso portrays Dinah, an accomplished lawyer who has established herself as a force to be reckoned with in the profession. She not only has scored record breaking settlement victories, she is mistress of the martini mixer and loves to start the day with a cool drink and a sharp tongue. However, as for her personal life and romantic adventures, she admits, she has had, "Honestly, a few less than a few." Are her only victories to be in the courtroom?

Vernadette, played by Cheryl Graves, seems to have been born with a dark cloud following her. Fortunately, she is a dedicated schoolteacher, as for the rest of her family, her husband is in and out of work, her children in and out of jail or off to follow the latest cult. However, with all that, she never loses faith in her beat up pickup, her sense of humor or her spunk, or her love for her college friends, even if her life is like one big country song.

Sweet, eager-to-please Jeri Neal, played by Audrey Killen, got the calling to enter the convent right after college graduation. The sisterhood seemed heavenly to her until she held another woman's baby for her. When she "looked into that baby's eyes and it was like a bolt of electricity just shot right through" her, she knew she was called to be a mother. What she didn't know was that babies are not particular about where they are born or if they interrupt a beach party.

Through morning screwdrivers, trying to act like it's normal to travel in a clown suit, stashing foul-tasting organic hors de oeuvres in the potted plants and attempting to help a former nun dress for a job interview, these swim club members keep laughing at and loving each other. "The Dixie Swim Club" is suitable for all audiences of all ages.

"The Dixie Swim Club" is presented through special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York.

Possum Point Players is supported, in part, by grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.