One of the common complaints about art critics is that we're nitpicky, as if assessing the finer details of a show weren't our job in the first place. When I watch a play, I notice the broad strokes, but I also inspect the minutiae that can, though barely perceptibly, cumulatively make or break the show. One misplaced stick of furniture blocks visibility. The wrong music cue turns a poignant moment into a joke. Anachronistic costumes or a trumpeter struggling for high notes pull an audience right out of the show's milieu, and it takes valuable minutes for more successful elements to pull it back in.

The truth is, several elements in Olympia Little Theatre's production of decade-spanning sitcom The Dixie Swim Club just don't work. The set changes opening night were interminable. Accents stretched into restrictive cadences. The pacing was slack throughout Act I. An excellent wig in the first scene gave way to a Mama's Family shock in the last. All five actresses earned laughs, but I wondered if shuffling roles would benefit the show. Even some of the jokes were fossils; yet Dixie stands as a glaring reminder that sometimes basic elements carry the day, and the microscopic vision of a critic wouldn't tell the right story.

A sitcom has two essential jobs. The first is to create interesting characters. The second is to be funny. That's it. Get those two elements right and we'll forgive almost anything else. Dixie Swim Club succeeds at both. I wasn't familiar with playwrights Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten, but as I watched the show, I deduced their careers as TV writers. I even called the series correctly; Dixie Swim Club has Golden Girls all over it. The latter show had four senior women sharing a Southern coastal home; the former has five women maturing into seniors while periodically visiting a Southern coastal bungalow.

The characters are clearly and distinctly drawn.  Sheree (Jennie Jenks) is the type A worrywart and organizer. Dinah (Teresa Wall) is an attorney and, by all appearances, a high-functioning alcoholic. Lexie (Maureen O'Neill) is addicted to cosmetic surgery and men. Jeri Neal (Kristina Cummins) is a nun with a heart of gold and a uterus with a secret, and Vernadette (Christine Goode) is ... well, let's just say if good luck were money, poor Vernadette couldn't buy the tip of a Tic Tac. They return to their favorite North Carolina beach house each August, the years behind soon outnumbering those to come, with the passage of time amusingly conveyed by Jennifer Espada's audio production team.

The Dixie Swim Club might be the perfect community theater script. It's gossipy without undue saltiness. It offers laughs - not just chuckles but laughs - several times a minute. It gives female actors a chance to shine in an ensemble, when the byword of community theater auditions is there'll always be too many women reading for too few opportunities. And it appeals to every segment of OLT's diverse audience, old and young, clever and undemanding, male and female.  I saw it with two women plus an Army helicopter pilot and a competition shooter, all of whom enjoyed it immensely. I did, too. Comedy can be rather like a helicopter; it either lands or it doesn't. This show lands.

The Dixie Swim Club

Through Oct. 3, 7:55 p.m. Thursday-Saturday excluding Oct. 23, 1:55 p.m. Sunday, $10-$12
Olympia Little Theatre, 1925 Miller Ave. NE, Olympia
360.786.9484