The Savannah Sipping Society – Just Drink It In…

Pruella Centers, Jeanna Van Dyke, Patti Speight, and Tanja Crouch
Photo by Nicole Mae Photography

By Tina Arth

There is a certain type of comedy that works beautifully for some folks, while leaving others out in the cold. The cast of Theatre in the Grove’s The Savannah Sipping Society drew a steady stream of laughter at their first Sunday matinee from an amazingly appreciative audience, so it appears that the Forest Grove company correctly read local audiences. This is no surprise, since at least two other shows by the prolific playwrights Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten have also drawn large, happy audiences in the same venue. I am not personally a fan of much of this type of Southern humor (a notable exception was TITG’s production of Dixie Swim Club). That said, I’m still impressed with the production – Director Jeanine Stassens, her cast, and production team are doing everything possible to put lipstick on this particular pig, and the result is a very fun show that provides a very entertaining couple of hours.

The Savannah Sipping Society is an inoffensive, usually gentle little comedy about four women who find themselves adrift in Savannah, Georgia as they make their way through middle age, deprived of family through a mixture of life choices, death, and infidelity. Three of them meet accidentally, all in hasty retreat from a hot yoga class that they quickly find is not the answer to their problems. Widowed Dot and angry divorcee Marlafaye invite themselves over for cocktails at the lovely home of Randa, a career-driven architect whose job was her whole life until she lost it: first she lost a promotion, then she lost her temper, and finally she lost her job. When her guests arrive, the tightly–wound Randa is in an uproar about her confrontation with a woman who had 8 items in the 5 items quick-check line. Dot has invited a surprise guest, Jinx – and of course she turns out to be the 8-item scofflaw. Sparks fly at first, but Jinx (a beautician and aspiring life coach) quickly endears herself. Soon fast friends, the four women begin meeting regularly for drinks and adventure (egged on by the ever-exuberant Jinx) – dancing, dating, kvetching, and lubricating themselves with new cocktail mixtures as they try to make sense of the next act of their lives.

Tanja Crouch (Randa), Pruella Centers (Marlafaye), Patti Speight (Jinx), and Jeanna Van Dyke (Dot) create four unique characters who, while very different from each other, still meld nicely – there is some real chemistry among the four. Centers is trashily bitter about ex-hubby Waylon and his new trophy wife, and she gets a few real zingers (her dark explanation of the perfect weight for a man and her tale of Waylon’s most spontaneous moment of love-making are delivered with exquisite timing and inflection).  Crouch is suitably buttoned-down and uptight, and it’s a real treat to watch her gradually open up to her friends and, eventually, to life. Despite the relatively thin emotional depth in the script, Van Dyke evokes both empathy and sympathy in her portrayal of a woman who loved her husband, but wants it clear that her life did not end with his. She tells the story of how her one and only date went wrong with quiet and utterly believable dignity, and she gets the pathos of advancing blindness just right as she moves from denial to acceptance. Speight is perfectly cast as Jinx – ebullient, bouncy, and seemingly ultra-confident while hiding her inner emptiness behind a mask of unstoppable enthusiasm.

So… what worked for me? (1) Mark Farris’ beautiful set – the exterior of Randa’s lovely home and a gracious verandah where almost all of the action takes place.  (2) The four leads (and Assistant Director Kate Barrett’s unheralded cameo) – if I’m going to watch a two-hour rerun of The Golden Girls this is the group I want to see. (3) The lighting and sound design, that make the single set flexible enough to eliminate the need for major scene changes. (4) The costumes (ranging from lovely to hysterical) and the hardest working folks in the theater, dressers Gratia Minor and Debbie Davis. (5) Stassens’ direction – she managed to hold it all together and create a fun, if not terribly memorable, show.

Despite my general distaste for the Southern Comedy genre, The Savannah Sipping Society as presented at Theater in the Grove provides a solid community theater experience, replete with laughs, so if the story sounds interesting to you then it’s definitely worth an afternoon or evening!

The Savannah Sipping Society plays at Theatre in the Grove, 2028 Pacific Avenue, Forest Grove through June 17^th with performances at 7:30 pm on Friday and Saturday and matinees at 2:30 pm on Sundays.