United Kingdom Steel Magnolias (a play by Robert Harding): Palace Theatre, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. 8.3.2023. (JPr)
Creatives:
Director – Anthony Banks
Set Designer – Laura Hopkins
Costume designer – Susan Kulkarni
Wig designer – Richard Mawbey
Lighting designer – Howard Hudson
Sound designer and Music – Ben and Max Ringham
Cast:
Laura Main – M’Lynn Eatenton
Harriet Thorpe – Ouiser Boudreaux
Diana Vickers – Shelby Eatenton-Latcherie
Lucy Speed – Truvy Jones
Caroline Harker – Clairee Belcher
Elizabeth Ayodele – Annelle Dupuy-Desoto
I received’t compile an inventory although I’ve watched a number of issues within the theatre based mostly on well-known motion pictures I’ve by no means seen. Steel Magnolias is the newest, however really the play got here first earlier than Hollywood (starring, amongst others, Dolly Parton and Julia Roberts). Robert Harling’s play – first seen within the West End in 1989 – was based mostly on occasions in his circle of relatives and the loss of life of his sister from problems of diabetes after the beginning of his nephew and the failure of a kidney transplant donated by a member of the family. As John Good wrote within the programme his sister ‘enjoyed the undying support of an exceptionally strong network of female friends and family of varying ages and circumstances, as portrayed in Harling’s play.’ We additionally learnt how ‘Once the play opened in the mid-1980s in New York, Harling soon realised he had written a comedy. “When the first preview audience came in, there was all this laughter, and we had no idea. We were completely thrown because we thought we had been rehearsing a drama.’
Magnolias are the state flower of Louisiana and Harding has mentioned now they ‘are fragile and bruise easily … qualities often attributed to Southern women … if you look underneath, they possess a tensile strength stronger than anything I could muster. Their strength, joy and laughter rang out no matter what life threw at them.’
So there you could have it, and Steel Magnolias introduces us to 6 ladies, who frequently come collectively at Truvy’s hairdressing salon: Truvy Jones admits she is constructed for ‘comfort not speed’ and is the proprietor of the salon; firstly of the play the younger Annelle Dupuy-Desoto is making use of for a job with Truvy who turns into a surrogate mom to Annelle, her ‘semi-daughter’; Clairee Belcher is the previous ‘First Lady of Chinquapin’ and has been not too long ago widowed and her husband was the previous Mayor of the city; Shelby Eatenton-Latcherie is the ‘prettiest girl in town’ and the daughter of M’Lynn, a profession lady who worries an important deal about her headstrong daughter and the 2 continuously conflict over Shelby’s life decisions; whether or not child’s breath in her hair or her resolution to have a child regardless of her diabetes; and Ousier Boudreaux who’s a little bit of an previous curmudgeon with ‘more money than god’, although we uncover her coronary heart is in the precise place.
Harling explores the friendship of the six ladies who present a beautiful help community for one another in no matter they’re going by of their lives which frequently appears to contain varied feckless males. Throughout the play’s three-year span all of the characters have their second within the highlight and undergo a journey, none extra so than M’Lynn. Laura Hopkins provides us only a single set which exhibits fairly a naturalistic neon-lit salon which we see from the attitude of the mirrors for the primary act and in reverse after the interval. Susan Kulkarni’s costumes are redolent of the Southern United States within the early Nineteen Eighties and Richard Mawbey’s bouffant wigs – and the hairdressing expertise of Lucy Speed as Truvy and Elizabeth Ayodele’s Annelle – are each mightily spectacular.
With pictures of Dolly Parton – who performed Truvy within the movie – on the partitions Lucy Speed heads the solid because the proprietor of the salon and hers is an out-and-out impression of Dolly and none the more serious for that, although it’s only her you think about significantly when Truvy says, ‘There is no such thing as natural beauty … My ladies get only the best. Do not scrimp on anything. Feel free to use as much hairspray as you want … Just look at me, Annelle. It takes some effort to look like this.’ It is her plain-talking that may convey the others again to earth and though the rapport is gradual to construct among the many solid – significantly within the lengthy drawn out first half – we start to bond with them all around the sacrifices they need to make and the emotional toll it has on them, though there’s nonetheless lots they discover to snigger at.
Amongst a powerful ensemble with appreciable theatre, TV and movie credit, Elizabeth Ayodele is pleasant because the slightly naïve Annelle who’s shy to start with and finally ends up discovering her personal voice, while Diana Vickers provides one other of the standout performances as Shelby (Julia Roberts performed her within the movie). Vickers’s Shelby is the epitome of a free-spirited – if slightly harmless – younger lady prepared to takes her life in her arms when she will get pregnant regardless of medical doctors’ recommendation. The formidable Ouiser will get a less-nuanced efficiency from Harriet Thorpe who relished traces like ‘I’m not loopy – I’ve simply been in a nasty temper for forty years’ and – about her patronage (important in a less-than-sold out Palace Theatre) – ‘I’ll write a test for the little theatre. I’ll help artwork. I simply don’t need to see it. Let’s get one factor straight. I don’t see performs as a result of I can nap at residence free of charge.’ Caroline Harker introduced wonderful comedian timing to the self-deprecating Clairee particularly on the poignant finish to the play when Harling orchestrates a (the one?) actual laugh-out-loud second. (Unfortunately, Harker’s is the least convincing American accent.) Actually, timing of punchlines was an issue and director Anthony Banks may have made extra effort to cease his solid gabbling a few of their extra important phrases and this could have generated extra laughs, which have been slightly missing on this night.
Absolved of this was Laura Main’s M’Lynn who cares deeply for Shelby and who will get a heartrending tour de power of a monologue about her daughter’s loss of life which concludes ‘I realised as a woman how lucky I was. I was there when this wonderful person drifted into my world and I was there when she drifted out. It was the most precious moment of my life thus far.’
Steel Magnolias is distinctly a play ‘of two halves’ and since it ends with the proper mix of what could be humorous and what can transfer you, hopefully you’ll not assume your two hours within the theatre may have been a waste.
Jim Pritchard
For particulars of the remaining efficiency on the tour click on right here.