Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten know how to please an audience.

They create plays that string together one-liners, put Southern women in funny, if predictable situations, and add outrageous circumstances that the women always react big to. They mix in some heart-warming moments, some arguments amongst the characters, and sufficient crises for each of the characters to get through.

If things seem a little forced or the characters a little too unrealistic in their differences, audiences are willing to forgive for the pure entertainment. And acting companies are thrilled to find material designed for middle-aged and older women.

And the actors, under the direction of Charles Burr, at Tibbits Opera House, do justice to “The Dixie Swim Club” and its five Southern women. They meet one weekend every August over a period of 55 years.

Gloria Logan plays Sheree, the former captain of their swim team, who continues to try to organize everyone’s life and feed them healthy foods. Suzanne Ogden Stewart is the oversexed, self-absorbed Lexie, who goes through husbands and men faster than through hair colors and surgical enhancements. Nancy Lipschultz is the career-focused Dinah, who is as generous as she is successful as a lawyer and is the “least sentimental” of the friends. Debbie Culver’s Vernadette attracts disaster more effectively than a lightning rod attracts lightning and fills the role of the poor redneck of the group. Nikki Savitt’s Jeri Neal enters the convent after they graduate and is the most naive and sweet of the five women.

They make a great ensemble, and are all very giving actors who work in tandem to make sure each of the character’s moments work. Each actor finds the balance between letting her character grow, mature and flourish, and yet find that central core that stays the same throughout the decades that pass.

All five women do well with the accents and effectively age over the course of the play, giving convincing portrayals of women in various stages of their life. If the women are more likely to say something for comic effect than because it is realistic for their character, the script must be blamed, for Jones-Hope-Wooten always make the choice to go for the laugh.

Cindy Tate’s wigs deserve special mention, as they help to age the characters through the years. Lexie in particular changes hair color frequently, and all but Dinah change styles and looks as the play progresses.

“The Dixie Swim Club” is an entertaining evening of laughs that ends with enough sentimentality to lift the play above the status of a night at the comedy club. It focuses on the perceived challenges of women in their 40s – child-rearing, careers, relationships, health, beauty, food and friendship. Each woman is sufficiently different to allow the playwrights to weave in different problems and how the characters face the crises at different stages of their lives.

It is, at heart, a weekend at the beach.