The women shared many light-hearted moments at Truvy's beauty salon.

by Shaj Mathew

In Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, the vicissitudes of life are plain for all to see—or hear, rather—in Truvy’s hair salon. At the salon, itself a sort of microcosm of the late-1980s American south, talk of mother-daughter struggles, marriage, and death abounds among six women. You don’t actually see these events take place, mind you.  But rest assured, you’ll hear about them at Truvy’s.

The decision to erect a smaller theater and seat the audience onstage paid dividends throughout the night—actors and audience were but a few feet apart, and this closeness magnified the joys and the sobs all night long.

Indeed, acting within the 160-seat theater constructed specially for the show, the ebullient Shelby (Kristen Giles) yearns for independence from her concerned mother, M’Lynn (Chelsea Johnson), as she prepares to marry her (unseen) lover. In and out the ladies filter through the salon—owned by their friend Truvy (Ariana Ramos)—discussing the latest tribulation to rock their lives: marriage, disease, surgery, death.

Stagecraft aspects aside, humor moves the play along.  Ouiser (Elizabeth Scopel) provides the ironic comic relief (“I’m not cranky, I’ve just been in a bad mood for forty years”), while Clairee (Julie Schrader), the elder statesman of the bunch, is more self-deprecating (“Jesus wasn’t even born when I was a junior in college”). And Anelle (Riley Bartlebaugh)—well, Annelle is just funny (“I cleaned them out of baby Jesuses,” she exclaims at Christmas).

Harling even injects humor in the play’s most tragic moments.  After Shelby dies during the surgery (while receiving a transplant from her mother—the drama!), her frail mother seeks solace in the salon during an austere, impassioned scene at Truvy’s.  M’Lynn is so distraught, so overcome with emotion that she just “want[s] to hit something hard.”

Clairee’s suggestion? Hit Ouiser.

Typical Harling—just when you’re on the verge of tears, he hits you with his specialty: humor. Magnolias is no mere superficial laugh-riot though. Harling explores themes of female kinship as well as death and illness, conveyed brilliantly thanks to the consummate excellence of the cast.  By the play’s conclusion, you get the idea that these women are resolute and yet delicate—the sort of dance which makes the title Steel Magnolias so apt.

Kristen Giles and Chelsea Johnson, daughter and mother.

The show, directed by Mr. Anderson, captures the zeitgeist of southern society of the time, one in which people are judged by their affiliation with a church and marital status. Football—high school no less—dominates at least one character’s interests.  And privacy? Get real—everyone at Truvy’s already knows the minutiae of your life story. Not that this paucity of privacy is a bad thing.  Au contraire.  It just makes the love, the anguish, the extremity of emotion shared by these six women all the more special, all the more rewarding to watch.