What can separate even the closest of friends? The future. What can reunite them? The past.
In the Hippodrome’s newest production, “The Bikinis,” Kelly Atkins, Catherine Fries Vaughn, Melanie Souza and Wydetta Carter play members of an aspiring girl group from years gone by. The Bikinis have reunited as their old stomping grounds are threatened by condominium developers offering to buy up the land for a hefty sum.
Decades after their heyday in the age of flower power, Jodi, Annie, Karla and Barbara reunite on the eve of the year 2000 to perform at The Sandy Shores Mobile Home Beach Resort, a trailer park community on the Jersey Shore.
The performance is a show-within-a-show. The concert sets the stage for the women to tell their story and, ultimately, for the community to decide whether to keep their homes or take the corporate payout.
With music dripping in mod and Vietnam-era nostalgia, “The Bikinis” tells the story of four Jersey girls who were on their way to local fame. In the first act, it seems like all that stood in their way to stardom was teenage girl obsession with boys like the hunky “Lifeguard 23” and the funds to record their first 45 rpm (vinyl record). The first act is silly, lighthearted and seems a bit frivolous, but it introduces you to the personalities of the characters.
By the second act the tone shifts, and more serious topics begin to cast a shadow over The Bikini’s aspirations for the Shangri Las-like fame. The war in Vietnam had begun and the girls reminisce on how the world seemed to change overnight. The subject of teenage fantasies and love triangles – “Lifeguard 23” – is drafted along with young men all over the country. Now grown women, Jodi, Annie, Karla and Barbara discuss how college, activism and marriage set The Bikinis on different paths.
“Act two takes a turn in terms of what was going on in our country during the Vietnam War, and some of the most gorgeous songs that have ever been written are in that act,” said director Lauren Warhol Caldwell. “We also see a group of women come out to those mike stands who are more mature and who have lived a lot more of life.”
The second act emerges with strength after the music-dense first act. Basic individuals blossom into relatable characters who, despite their stark differences, form a reflection of enduring female friendship and a bond that transcends circumstance.
“I think the audience can relate to the friendship between the four women, and because of (Caldwell’s) casting, the four of us are very different,” Vaughn said. “The friendship between the women in the show when they were a young girl group singing those songs in the ‘60s, up through the serious times of their lives, the Vietnam war and how the friendship bonded them through all of it.”
With an all-female cast and female director, “The Bikinis” glides through themes of female friendship with a natural ease. The women are flawed, but their individual relationships as sisters, cousins and friends are layered and evolve throughout the show.
“The main core of the show is these women, what they survived, what they created together, who they became and the music just sort of lifts them as a platform that relates to the story of this friendship,” Caldwell said.
