Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, on stage at the On Pitch Performing Arts Center in Layton, is a Southern comedy-drama set exclusively in Truvy’s (Kara Bechtel) beauty shop in Chinquapin Parish, Louisiana. Harling based the play on his experience with his sister’s death and meant it as a tribute to her. It was enormously successful from the start and had a quick rise to Broadway and a 1989 film adaptation. The story follows a group of Southern ladies as they face life’s toughest challenges including marriage, birth, and death, with friendship, humor, and deep emotion. The women gather weekly at the beauty parlor to laugh, gossip, cry, and offer friendship and understanding to each other. On Pitch Performing Art’s production of this classic piece is a well-crafted joy.
Michael Nielsen directs the extraordinary cast who make the audience feel as if we too are part of the tribe of women visiting the beauty parlor. The cast wins the audience from the start as we meet the kind Truvy, played with down-home charm and spunk by Bechtel. Bechtel is phenomenal as the wise-cracking, outspoken Truvy; the glue who holds the group of women together. In the opening scene, Truvy is testing the skills of new hire Annelle Dupuy-Destoy (Jill Savoie). Savoie delivers a transformative performance in the role of Annelle as her character grows and develops a great deal throughout the show’s duration. Truvy tells Annelle that Saturday mornings are reserved for the neighborhood ladies and one by one they file in. April Daw plays Clairee Belcher and embodies the role of a wise widow with elegance, grace, and a hint of sass. Clairee’s unlikely best friend, Ouiser Boudreaux, performed impeccably by Carole Taylor, blows onto the stage with witty insults and her barking dog wreaking havoc outside. The hilarious repartee is in full swing as we are introduced to Shelby.
The center of Steel Magnolias is the story of M’Lynn Eatenton and her daughter Shelby. Shelby, played to perfection by Hailey Parnell, is endearing and headstrong while her mother M’Lynn, played by Jennifer Ericksen, is the doting matriarch. Parnell and Ericksen flawlessly create a mother-daughter duo with all the tension and love you would expect in such a relationship. The cast together celebrates Shelby’s marriage and the birth of her son and come together to grieve with M’Lynn as Shelby succumbs to a body that isn’t as strong as her will. M’Lynn’s emotional outburst near the end of the play is portrayed with such honesty and hurt from Ericksen that the floodgates open onstage and in the audience where there isn’t a dry eye to be found.
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The Scenic Design by Brandon Stauffer and costume design by Amanda Larsen successfully transport the audience back to 1983, complete with acid washed jeans, floral dresses, homemade earrings and a set that is simple, yet perfect.
There were a few tiny stumbles in dialog and timing, but despite that, the women of this cast deliver unique performances that harmonize beautifully into one irresistible chord. This cast, telling this story, reminds us that relationships are what we need to sustain us through the joys and the sorrows of life and that, though we be as delicate as a magnolia, we may also be as tough as steel.
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