Steel Magnolias, Robert Harling’s play currently in a beautifully done production at Hawthorne Players, introduces us to six Southern women who are “as delicate as magnolias but as tough as steel.”
The play takes place in Truvy Jones’ Beauty Shop in the small town of Chinquapin in northwest Louisiana, and it’s about the women who gather there, partly to have their hair done, but mostly to be together, to socialize, to gossip, to challenge and comfort one another. The male playwright must have drawn an accurate picture of these women, or at least an attractive one, because the play continues to be very popular. Having six juicy roles for women doesn’t hurt.
The play has lots of laughs, and eventually a good cry. Steel Magnolias illustrates what we can now call, thanks to the suggestion of my witty and perceptive colleague Gerry Kowarsky, the Kowarsky Corollary to Anton Chekhov’s dictum that if a gun appears in the first act of a play, it must be fired by the last act. The Kowarsky Corollary states that if a potentially fatal disease appears in the first act of a play, someone must be grievously affected by it by the end of the play.
So it is in Steel Magnolia. In the first scene, the shop’s owner Truvy is dressing Shelby’s hair for her wedding on that very day. Shelby suffers a brief attack from her diabetes, and at Hawthorne in Natalie Sannes’s sterling performance the transformation in the young woman is surprising, shocking, and complete. A little orange juice takes care of it, but so it begins. Shelby is a bright, lively young woman, full of vitality and determined to live the life she wants despite her body’s limitations. As her mother M’Lynn, Susan Wylie worries but tries very hard not to be too protective. Wylie takes her character through extremes. Therese Melnykov’s Truvy is an efficient businesswoman and a comforter and confidant to all. Lily Buehler delights as Truvy’s shy new assistant Annelle who blossoms into a party girl and then gets religion very seriously and by the end of the play is married and very pregnant. Clairee Belcher, widow of a former mayor and new owner of the town’s radio station, gets many of the play’s best lines, and Carol Hodson quietly makes the most of them. She also knows how to needle her friend Ouiser, the group’s beloved curmudgeon, with Nancy Crouse deliciously giving full throttle to Ouiser’s complaints in a role unlike any I’ve seen Crouse do before.
Trish Nelke’s direction guided these splendid performances. Pippin McGowan cleverly designed the set with two walls of the beauty shop meeting in an open V-shape, a door in each wall , filled with beauty shop chairs and all the appropriate props assembled by the cast, crew, and friends as the Props Committee. Nancy Crouse’s costumes enriched the actors’ performances of their characters. Eric Wennlund designed the lighting, Natalie Piacentini designed the sound, and Carol Hodson and Therese Melnykov designed hair, obviously important in this play.
Hawthorne Players’ Steel Magnolias is funny, moving, and fine entertainment.
—Bob Wilcox
Photo by Wolfe Creative Media Services
From the left: Susan Wylie as M’Lynn, Carol Hodson as Clairee, Nancy Crouse as Ouiser, Lily Buehler as Annelle, Natalie Sannes (standing) as Shelby, and Therese Melnykov (sitting) as Truvy in Steel Magnolias.
