Review: Steel Magnolias blossoms in Port Hope

Near the end of Capitol Theatre’s warm-hearted production of Steel Magnolias (Rating: ✭✭✭✭), M’Lynn (Deborah Drakeford) tells the supportive friends and neighbours in her local hair salon, “You have no idea how wonderful you are.”

She’s not kidding. The Port Hope, Ont.-based theatre company has assembled such a wonderful group of artists for this production that Toronto theatre fans would be foolish to miss it.

Robert Harling’s play is best known for its star-studded 1989 film adaptation, which added different locations and a bunch of (mostly) male characters who are mentioned in the play but never seen.

The all-female play takes place solely in the home-based beauty parlour of Truvy (Raquel Duffy), the well-put-together, manicured and knowing proprietor who washes, cuts, sets and dries everyone through life’s passages. As she tells one customer, “Honey, time marches on and eventually you realize it’s marchin’ across your face.”

When the play opens, Annelle (Belinda Corpuz), a newcomer to town, is working on Truvy’s hair before the latter hires her to work at the salon. This will be her first day on the job — a clever idea that allows Harling to introduce the play’s characters in a way that doesn’t feel forced or contrived.

There’s the well-off, slow-talking Clairee (Carolyn Fe), whose husband, the mayor, recently died. Shelby (Charlotte Dennis) is getting married on this special day and so she and her mother, M’Lynn, will get preferential treatment. And then there’s Ouiser (Brenda Robins), an eccentric and crotchety older woman who seems to have her nose in everyone’s business. (She’s very suspicious about Annelle’s origins, for instance.)

In the lengthy, leisurely opening scene, director Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster makes good use of Jackie Chau’s homey, lived-in set. The play is set in the 80s, so there are no cellphones, and a radio plays a fairly important role in the women’s lives (Maddie Bautista’s sound design helps give us a feel for the time and locale, as well as some regional quirks like shooting trees to get rid of birds).

Plot isn’t the main draw of a show like Steel Magnolias. Harling seems more interested in the way women talk and share information about their lives, and Ch’ng Lancaster and the actors make all their interactions feel authentic.

The one significant event that occurs is when the diabetic Shelby has a hypoglycemic attack, and it’s revealed that she’s been told by her doctors not to get pregnant. She and her fiancé have discussed adoption. M’Lynn, however, is worried.

In later scenes — a few props cuing us about what time of year it is — we witness the women going through changes big and small. But the most important change is that Shelby has made a decision about her life, speaking one of the play’s most quotable lines (and there are many): “I’d rather have 30 minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.”

Notice that word wonderful again. It’s intentional.

Ch’ng Lancaster offers up many pleasures in this production, among them getting to savour a brilliant all-female cast as they joke (Robins and Fe get some of the best lines), cry, hug, persevere and support each other. I don’t think the title is ever explained in the play, but it doesn’t need to be. Unlike the men in their lives, these women have wills of steel.

This isn’t the most layered or complex script, but there’s enough in each of these parts for the gifted actors to inhabit fully. Besides having a signature look, carefully costumed by Laura Gardner to tell us something about their station in life, the women have their own way of speaking, moving and holding themselves. Robins, in particular, creates a vibrant character who looks like she could walk right off the stage and into the street. (Also: what a treat to see Duffy and Robins, once frequent performers at Soulpepper, on a stage together.)

The fact that Drakeford and Dennis are actual mother and daughter gives the production an added touch of realism. Dennis, who was so intense and neurotic in Coal Mine’s recent Job, has a frank straightforwardness and clarity about what her character wants; Drakeford, meanwhile, plays a woman who is used to holding back and listening to other people’s problems — it’s part of her job, after all — but who finally, in a deeply affecting monologue, gets to let loose.

It’s rare to see two or three, let alone six, fine roles for women in a single play. You’ll love spending time with them, and they’re only an hour and a half away from Toronto.

Steel Magnolias runs until August 3 at the Capitol Theatre, 20 Queen St., Port Hope. See details here