Editor’s Note: Due to technical problems, Alicia Anstead’s review of “Pride’s Crossing” failed to appear as scheduled on Monday, Feb. 7. The NEWS regrets the delay.

Mabel Tidings Bigelow is a champion. It’s not just that she was born into a wealthy set of Boston blue bloods. Or that she’s quick-witted. Or even that she set a world record when she swam the English Channel. It’s that she burns with a heroic passion for life.

And that’s at 90 — her age at the beginning of Tina Howe’s memory play “Pride’s Crossing,” which opened Friday at Penobscot Theatre. Mabel comes from Boston blue blood. She was born at a time when women were ladies, and ladies didn’t go sailing or marathon swimming or do much in the way of exerting glory. But Mabel had aspirations to swim the English Channel, and she could not be stopped — not by conventions and certainly not by her mother.

Rebecca Cook, who plays Mabel, is also unstoppable, and she proves herself a strong swimmer in this role from beginning to end. She wears no makeup, no wigs and relies only minimally on props to create a rich portrait of Mabel’s life. As the old Mabel, Cook hunches and lowers her voice to a Katherine Hepburn crackle. As the youthful Mabel, she is a blur of excitement and wonder. And none of her theatricality screams out: Look at me. Yet you can do little else but look at her.

As with the powerful Cherry Jones, who originated the role in New York, Cook gets Tina Howe’s philosophy about “the passion of old ladies.” Even though a woman did swim the English Channel in 1926, Mabel Tidings Bigelow is a fictional character based on Howe’s own Aunt Maddy. “When men age, they just get older,” Howe writes, “but women become very powerful … As time passes, the membranes between what we should do and what we want to do get thinner and thinner. There is no rage like old lady rage, just as there’s no tenderness like old lady tenderness.” Mabel is her tribute to Maddy.

As cliched as it sounds, this production, directed by former University of Maine theater instructor Patricia Riggin, is a triumph that leaves sentimentality and preachiness behind. There’s so much anger and so much tenderness on stage that you can easily imagine Mabel swimming across five English Channels.

Just as Mabel couldn’t have succeeded without the plucky support of her feisty brothers, a doting trainer (who was in love with her), and a brilliant coach (who was also a lover), the supporting cast for this show has the strong muscles to row along with her.

Locally speaking, this is an all-star cast. Julie Arnold Lisnet, Robert Libbey, Ron Adams, Bob Field, Ken Stack, Leslie Michaud, Sharon Zolper and 12-year-old Jessie Warren navigate the waters of this tricky play with coordination, strength and elegance. They go the distance: funny, hostile, joyful and, above all else, perfectly matched as members of an ensemble. Cook is the star, but the actors are confident and talented enough to make a splash that picks up and illuminates the light around them.

Jay Skriletz’s sets and Lynne Chase’s lighting design make the substantial transitions between past and present, tension and delight occur elegaically. Ginger Phelps’ period costumes are so lacy and delicate, they make you long for the past.

Howe’s writing is witty and poetic. While she has a marvelous and compassionate sense of King Lear in the life of every elderly person, she also sees the sweetness of youth and the dynamism of the middle years. And her sense of family trauma, drama and inheritance is both wry and wrenching.

Due to popular demand, “Pride’s Crossing” will be performed through Feb. 27. Performances are at 7 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 5 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Penobscot Theatre, 183 Main St. in Bangor. For tickets, call 942-3333.