It is all too easy for Southern culture to become a caricature. Heavy accents and strong personalities become the easy butt of jokes in media, minimizing the beautiful complexities and the grace and humor with which the inescapable tragedies of life are handled in southern families and communities.
“Steel Magnolias,” most well-known for its 1989 film adaptation starring Julia Roberts and Dolly Parton, began as a short story of grief poured onto the page by a Louisiana boy who had just lost his sister to the ruthless effects of diabetes. Robert Harling, trying to make sense of his sister’s death, transformed his short story into a play in just ten days. It became an off-Broadway hit and was later adapted for the screen by Harling, becoming the classic film we all know today.
“Steel Magnolias” pulls on our hearts because it’s not a caricature—it’s a sweet, funny, intimate portrait of the struggle and loneliness of women, their heartaches, their triumphs, their quirks, and trivialities, and how they are loved and supported by each other through it all, a few snarky clapback’s notwithstanding.
In the performing arts, no one discipline stands alone. The most brilliant actors can only go so far with a poor script, and a brilliant script will fall flat without the correct caliber of actor. Renton Civic Theatre’s production of Harling’s play does complete justice to his moving script, translating his work of grief and love onto the stage with the fullness of understanding necessary to allow audiences to feel the bittersweet mundanity of life borne together in the ruthless passing of time.
And feel it we do, in the play’s only setting, Truvy Jones’ (Lisa Stromme Warren) salon in Chinquapin, Louisianna. Nothing changes in the salon except the hairdo’s of the women who come and go and the pages of the calendar on the wall, but what is seen is the fabric of their lives, woven through their conversations about ordinary things—a wedding, a radio, a trip out of town—and the unbreakable steel of what they are able to endure; with a stunning new nail color and every hair in place.
The performances of this cast are outstanding, every player clearly understanding the nuances required to accurately convey the humor and culture of 1980s Louisiana without distorting their characters into cartoons or satire.
The performances of Lisa Stromme Warren as Truvy Jones and Kiki Werner as Ouiser Boudreaux are particularly strong, playing two sides of the strong personality spectrum. Stromme Warren is the picture of the southern woman you feel instantly safe with, the one who knows exactly what to say in any situation to comfort your soul and keep your chin up. Werner is the opposite, performing the cantankerous Ouiser Boudreaux as the irascible counterweight to the ensemble with a hidden heart of gold buried beneath all the vinegar.
And of course, the mother-daughter bond at the heart of the show between Shelby Eatenton-Latcherie (Gemma Kealy) and M’Lynn Eatenton (Eleanor Withrow) is the tear-jerking portrait of the complex emotional terrain between a mother and daughter. The love the two women have for one another is undercut by a life-long power-struggle to stand as one’s own, to live life as one must, even if it means staring down the possibility of the unthinkable.
In short, Renton Civic Theater’s production of “Steel Magnolias” will transport you through the human heart, with tears, laughter, and a fresh new hairdo to face whatever comes.
Tickets
“Steel Magnolias” is performed Saturdays and Sundays at 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. through April 26 at Renton Civic Theatre (map below).
For more information and to buy tickets, visit the Renton Civic Theatre website.
