Steel Magnolias

‘Steel Magnolias’ was written by Robert Harling as a stage play, being based on a personal family tragedy. The play premiered in 1987 Off Broadway, followed by premieres in numerous languages, the latest being Swedish in late 2008.

This play became the eternal chick flick and famous ‘weepy’ movie when it was released in 1989.

This stage production has its season presented by the Stirling Players, until Saturday 17^th March, at The Sterling Theatre, Morris Place, Innaloo. The start time for this two and a half hour play is 8.00 pm. There is a matinee on Sunday 11^th at 2.00 pm.

      It is the Deep South, and in a small Louisiana town, Chinquapin is ‘Truvy's Beauty Parlour and Hairstylists’ that is built on the side of her house. Truvy (Nicole George) is showing her very young, immature and nervous new glamour-consultant, Annelle (Mahalia Bowles), the layout of the beauty salon. The first appointment of the day arrives; she is Shelby (Kimberley Harris), who has a mania for pink, and is having her hair styled for her wedding that afternoon.
      Suddenly there is an outburst of gunshots, a dog barks and Shelby curses her father who is shooting any birds that are doing their droppings all over the reception area. A very smartly dressed lady arrives for tinting; she is Clairee (Hillary Readings), the extremely wealthy widow of the late Mayor. In such a small community everyone is a close friend – but even so, Annelle is very reluctant to disclose her past.
      When Selby’s controlling mum, M’Lynn (Sue McLennan) arrives, she unsuccessfully tries to change Selby’s choice of hair decoration. The last customer of the day to turn up is the miserable and rough hick, Ouiser Boudreaux (Tracey Woolrych). She comes not so much for fashion but for the friendship of the other regulars who come on the same day every week.
      Will Selby’s marriage be a success and will Annelle fit into the community?

Believe it or not, I have not yet seen the film, so this play was completely new to me.

Director, Ryan Taaffe kept the actors moving around the set and creating plenty of interest. Their expressions and emotions worked well and strong characters were developed. The actors all captured the American drawl, and thankfully all sounded alike, the accents were very good. There is nothing worse than having completely diverse accents from different states. There is a great deal of dialogue for this small cast, but unfortunately the pace was well off, with a couple of awkward silences. The cast were well rehearsed, so hadn’t forgotten their lines, just too long a pause. When the scene changes took place, because there was a large time difference in the acts, the actors were required to change costumes. The fade to dark therefore seemed very long. This slowed the pace even further, losing some of the sensitive atmosphere that had been expertly built up. The script has plenty of humour to help contrast and accentuate the sadness of the storyline, but again, due to the pace this humour rarely came across. It is the start of the play’s run, and I am sure that this will sort itself within another couple of shows.

John Farrington’s superb set had a plumbed in sink, long bench seating and all of the fittings of a real beauty salon (Kate McIntosh, Hillary Reading and Rachel Leonhardt). The lighting design (Jon Lambert, operator Carole Wilson) was even, with no dark spots and the Christmastime dim lighting was most effective. Very good crisp, realistic sound effects and noises-off (Kate McIntosh and Ian Wilson).

An excellent programme, decent font size, informative and with many sharp colour photos.

The story is fairly simple with few threads, so that the whole storyline relies on demonstrating the strong bond of friendship between the women, which Ryan managed to do well. However, the deep sorrow at the climax of the story unfortunately didn’t quite get there.

It is an extremely brave challenge, taking a film icon that can show close-ups, have retakes, no scene changes and then trying to reproduce it as well on stage. However, as a whole I thoroughly enjoyed the play, and had a really good night out.

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