By Bethany Peterson/nw news editor

Friends who were glued together in high school often grow apart as life changes them.

Vanities, written by Jack Heifner and performed by the NW theater program April 27-May 1, takes a close look at how people change and how that change affects their relationships with each other.

The play has three characters and three scenes: one in high school, one in college and one after they have all established their lives.

As time advances, the three girls who were so close in high school become women separated by their personalities and goals.

“It’s a play about friendship and betrayal,” Anastasia Braswell said.

Braswell’s character Joanne is a girl who wants the world to stay like it is.

“[Joanne is] the girl in high school who wants to keep the same friends and doesn’t want anything to change,” said Abigail Herring, another cast member.

Mary, Herring’s character, is the exact opposite.

“Mary is this image of freedom,” Braswell said.

“Sensual freedom,” Herring added.

The third character, played by Marshelle Phillips, is Kathy, the structured one of the three.

“I am Miss Perfect,” Phillips said about her character. “Might as well be the high school military sergeant.”

With four and six years between acts, the play highlights the changes in people too gradual to be noticed on a day-to-day basic.

“In the first two acts, my character is very much the same,” Phillips said.

But by the third act, there are marked changes in all the characters, Phillips said.

“We always see changes when we haven’t seen each other in 10 years,” she said. “There will be people in the audience who say, ‘I was that girl,’ or guys who say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I dated that girl.’ It’s so much more about the characters than the plot.”

The play leaves the audience open to hard thoughts about people and their actions.

“You see three different sides [of Mary],” Herring said. “Sometimes you see sides that you don’t want to see.”

And there is agreement among the cast as to the root of the characters’ relationship troubles.

“I think they are all just jealous of each other,” Braswell said.

The play also deals with changing society.

“It brings up uncomfortable ideas,” Braswell said.

“Some of these ideas are very new [in the time the play is set], but we just live with them now,” Herring added.

But no matter how the characters disagree on stage, the actors are getting along great.

“I’m having a hard time being mean to you [in the play],” Herring told Braswell.