REVIEW: The Savannah Sipping Society is comfortingly familiar while telling a new and funny story

The Players’ Guild of Hamilton’s satisfying season-ending comedy brings together four women over 50 who are searching for friendships and new directions.

The last production of the season for The Players’ Guild of Hamilton is The Savannah Sipping Society, a funny, well-paced, and satisfying comedy that brings together four women over 50 who prove that life is worth living enthusiastically and that there’s lots of adventure left to be savoured in middle age and beyond.

The four women, Randa, Dot, Marlafaye, and Jinx, are very different personalities and come from different walks of life, but as a one-time happy hour get-together turns into months of friendship, they find themselves forging valuable bonds and renewed direction in life. As the most powerful line of the play goes, “it's never too late to make new old friends.”

The Savannah Sipping Society premiered in Georgia in 2016 before being taken on by community theatres across North America. The playwrights behind it, Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten, are collectively known as JONES HOPE WOOTEN and are well known for their very popular and widely-produced comedies that include strong roles for women. Collectively, they've written for television, film, and theatre. As well as The Savannah Sipping Society, the trio have penned Dearly Beloved, Christmas Belles, The Red Velvet Cake War, Always A Bridesmaid, Deliver Us From Mama!, and many more. Local theatre-goers will remember that Theatre Burlington presented another of JONES HOPE WOOTEN’s plays, The Sweet Delilah Swim Club, back in April 2024.

David Dayler and Connie Spears are back at The Players’ Guild as co-directors of The Savannah Sipping Society. They are showing their range here as they directed a very different production last year, the emotionally loaded and dramatic God & The Indian. What the two plays share in common is the centrality of the dialogue in carrying the story, as well as the importance that the characters’ words and behaviours ring true to life.

The cast of The Savannah Sipping Society succeeds as a colourful and authentic quartet of women over 50 building friendships during milestone periods in each of their lives. The play is beautifully balanced by Deb Dagenais (Randa), Gail Edwards (Dot), Maria Hayes (Marlafaye), and Tina Hardwell (Jinx). There’s also a short but memorable appearance by Carolyn Marshall as Randa’s crochety and formidable Grandmother Covington.

As Dayler and Spears describe in their playbill notes, The Savannah Sipping Society focuses on “four unique Southern women, each at a crossroads, (who) find solace and strength in their new-found bond.” Like a TV sitcom, the play is full of witty repartee, “hilarious misadventures and heartfelt moments,” as the women build their connection, embrace change, and gradually see their chosen family take shape.

Dagenais is a local actor who can be relied upon to give a solid performance and this production is no exception. Dagenais’ Randa is a self-described logical woman who is a bit uptight. She’s seen her previously well-ordered life as a successful architect spectacularly demolished around her with the result that she must reach out of her comfort zone to rebuild. As she attempts to try new things, she gradually comes into contact with Dot, Marlafaye, and Jinx, three distinct personalities with stories of their own. They all find themselves in Savannah for different reasons, but each is in need of new friends.

Edwards is lovable as sweet Dot, the slightly older member of the foursome who gamely tries new experiences after finding herself widowed shortly after retiring to Savannah. Hayes has terrific comedic timing as the brash and unfiltered Texan Marlafaye, divorced after many years of marriage from her philandering husband. Hardwell is the flashy, fun, and persuasive Jinx who, as a kind of pied piper, encourages them all to branch out and grasp new experiences. Over time, we gradually uncover more about her private pain and the source of her nomadic lifestyle.

A make-or-break aspect of the production lies in the cast’s ability to speak with Southern accents that are believable and avoid an exaggerated level of twang, which could prove distracting. Dagenais has performed in several productions in which she would have honed this ability (Steel Magnolias; To Kill A Mockingbird) and Hardwell herself was raised in Georgia, but each actor in the play strikes the right chord.

Solid, spacious, well decorated and allowing for any number of seating combinations, Randa’s verandah is where the bulk of the play’s action takes place. As a testament to Daylor’s set design and the production’s set builders, I told my theatre companion Audrey (both of us friends over 50) how much I’d like to sit on a porch like the one onstage and went on to overhear several people in the audience express the same sentiment.

It will come as no shock to Players’ Guild audience members that one of The Savannah Sipping Society’s playwrights, Jamie Wooten, was a writer/producer on the beloved television series The Golden Girls. Without feeling derivative, the vibe of the play’s characters as well as their banter remind one of The Golden Girls and other TV shows and films with a Southern flair, including Designing Women and Steel Magnolias. There’s something comforting and familiar about the play while it tells a likable and even touching new story. 

The Players’ Guild has adult beverages available before the show and at intermission, including cocktails inspired by The Savannah Sipping Society. As an extra special incentive, ticket holders for the show on Friday, June 6 will enjoy a complimentary wine tasting in the hour before the performance, hosted by Sue-Ann Staff Estate Winery.

NEED TO KNOW

The Savannah Sipping Society
The Players’ Guild
80 Queen St. S., Hamilton
Continues June 6, 12, 13 & 14 at 8 p.m. with matinees June 7, 8 & 14 at 2 p.m.
Box office: (905) 529-0284 or playersguild.org