STEEL MAGNOLIAS

STEEL MAGNOLIAS:

A Comedy That Will Make You Cry

Steel Magnolias is a comedy-drama play written by Robert Harling based on his experience with his sister’s death. As the title suggests the “female characters are as delicate as magnolias but tough as steel”. The magnolia specifically references a magnolia tree they are arguing about at the beginning of the play. The action is set in Truvy’s beauty salon in Chinquapin, Louisiana, a fictitious town, where all the ladies who are “anybody” come to have their hair done. Helped by her eager new assistant, Annelle (who is not sure whether or not she is still married), the outspoken, wise cracking Truvy dispenses shampoos and free advice to the town’s rich curmudgeon, Ouiser, (“I’m not crazy, I’ve just been in a bad mood for forty years”); an eccentric millionaire, Miss Clairee, who has a raging sweet tooth; and the local social leader, M’Lynn, whose daughter, Shelby (the prettiest girl in town), is about to marry a “good ole boy”. Filled with hilarious repartee and not a few acerbic but humorously revealing verbal collisions, the play moves toward tragedy when, in the second act, the spunky Shelby (who is a diabetic) risks pregnancy and forfeits her life. The sudden realization of their mortality affects the others, but also draws on the underlying strength – and love – which give the play, and its characters, the special quality to make them truly touching, funny and marvelously amiable company in good and bad times.