“Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion” confesses salon owner Truvy (Robyne Parrish) toward the end of Robert Harling’s play Steel Magnolias. That could also well be the motto of the Pittsburgh Public Theatre production, which keeps the laughs coming even as the plot tugs at the heartstrings.
You may be familiar with the material via the 1989 film that was made based on Harling’s play. The action, which centers on a set of women living in small-town Chinquapin Parrish, Louisiana, takes place in Truvy’s salon (a women’s space in teals and curlicues, set design by Anne Mundell) where, as the play opens, a new stylist, Annelle (Saige Smith), has just been hired. Truvy needs the help, because it’s about to be a busy day: one of her regular customers, Shelby (Kyra Kennedy), is getting married, and she and her mother M’Lynn (Monica Wyche) and their friends Clairee (Elizabeth Elias Huffman) and Ouiser (Helena Ruoti) all need their hair done in preparation for the wedding. Both wedding prep and newcomer Annelle give Harling opportunity to frontload exposition and backstory – we learn, in the first scene, that Shelby’s groom Jackson loves to hunt and lives by the Southern values of “shoot it, stuff it, or marry it”; that Clairee, as a widow of the former mayor, is a town powerbroker; that M’Lynn helps provide services to the mentally ill and has confiscated her husband’s gun to keep him from continuing to chase off the local birds; that Truvy has a couch-potato husband and two grown kids; that Ouiser is perennially in a bad mood; and – most importantly – that “my favorite color is pink” Shelby is a type 1 diabetic who has been counselled against getting pregnant. Even if you’ve never seen the movie, you probably know what’s coming.
The rest of the plot unspools over the next couple of years, as holidays, seasons, and life events flow through the salon, and the women’s friendships develop and deepen through changes and challenges. Harling’s writing is sharp and witty, and the cast deploys a range of Southern accents to capture the wit and sting of his lines (Don Wadsworth was the dialect coach). While Ruoti, as the sourpuss of the group, gets some of the best zingers (she had my favorite line of the evening: “I don’t see plays ‘cuz I can nap at home for free”), there is comedy spread across the board, and all of the performers have terrific timing and delivery. The characters are clearly delineated; a strength of both the play and production (directed by Marya Sea Kaminski) is the idiosyncratic life given to each of the women. Wyche brings a nice dryness to her portrayal of M’Lynn; Parrish is charismatic as the de facto host of the festivities; and Smith is winning as the wide-eyed newcomer Annelle. Huffman can at times be hard to understand, but her characterization of Clairee feels spot-on, as does Kennedy’s portrayal of the sweet, generous, but at times a little spiky Shelby. The ensemble’s clear ease and joy in each other’s company spills over into the production, making for a satisfying evening with a group of fierce, sassy, there-for-each-other women.
The Pittsburgh Tatler 