The biggest challenge of staging a play later made into a very successful film is that when the story ultimately makes its way back to the theater, audiences have built-in ideas about who should play the roles and how.
On Saturday, Backyard Renaissance Theatre opened a new production of Robert Harling’s 1987 stage play “Steel Magnolias” at the Tenth Avenue Arts Center in East Village. Most people know the story from its 1989 film adaptation with an all-star cast that included Julia Roberts, Sally Field, Dolly Parton and Shirley MacLaine. Those are daunting shoes to fill, so director Anthony Methvin doesn’t try.
Methvin, Backyard’s cofounder and producing director, has cast six women actors who aren’t attempting to re-create the film’s unforgettable performances. Instead these actors have made the roles their own, and that’s a good thing. The film sometimes tipped into melodrama, scenery-chewing and dramatic eye rolls, but Methvin’s Backyard production aims for more authenticity and understatement.
The play is set in a 1980s-era Louisiana beauty salon where six very different women from their 20s to their 70s bond, fight, gossip, laugh, celebrate and grieve the ups and downs of their lives. The play’s central character is Shelby, a diabetic young married woman who decides to have a baby despite the the danger a pregnancy could pose to her health.
Wendy Maples anchors the play with a warm and gentle performance as hairstylist Truvy, whose 1980s-era back-bedroom salon has been nicely designed and well-appointed by Tony Cucuzzella. The play opens on Shelby’s wedding day, when she and her mother, M’Lynn, have arrived at Truvy’s for hairdos. As Shelby, Liliana Talwatte has a perky, chin-up stubbornness about what she wants to do with her hair and her life, while as M’Lynn, Marci Anne Wuebben is soft-spoken but firm in her overprotectiveness.
As the wealthy widow Clairee, Dagmar Krause Fields is upbeat, wise and effusive. And as new salon employee Annelle, Claire Kaplan credibly takes her divorcée-turned-born-again-Christian character through a big arc of life changes during the play. And as Ousier, the town grump who has been “in a bad mood for 40 years,” Annie Hinton winningly underplays this role that could easily be performed just for laughs.
And speaking of laughs, despite the play’s sad moments, it’s very funny, with so many great lines that several online articles can be found listing the script’s best one-liners. My favorite is Shelby’s declaration about pregnancy to her mother that she’d “rather have 30 minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special.”
The play takes place over a period of nearly three years. The passing time is told cleverly through the Peter Herman’s gradually changing wigs and makeup and Jeanne Reith’s costumes. Sound is by Andrew Gutierrez and lighting by Michelle Miles.
Despite the play’s age, it still holds up as a tribute to the power of friendship and to the strength of Southern women, who Harling poetically described as steel magnolias.
When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. 2 p.m. Sundays. Through Sept. 17
Where: Tenth Avenue Arts Center, 930 10th Ave., San Diego
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Get U-T Arts & Culture on Thursdays
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You may occasionally receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune.
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