“Desperate Housewives” may be the flavor of the month, but will it have the staying power of “Steel Magnolias”?
ABC’s hit TV show and Robert Harling’s durable play focus on the trials and tribulations of a group of women beset with a host of family and personal problems.
But while the conniving residents of Wisteria Lane are downright wacko in their response to life’s vexing issues, the six women who gather regularly at Truvy’s Beauty Spot are a Southern sisterhood of sharing and support.
They gab and gossip and joke through the good times, and circle the wagons in the bad.
Harling’s play, the source for a hit 1989 movie with an all-star cast, is a sentimental talkfest juiced up with plenty of comic barbs and poignant scenes.
And it offers six meaty roles for women, the characters’ lives interwoven in more ways than their weekly dates at the beauty shop, a converted carport somewhere in small-town Louisiana.
The Village Theatre has assembled a cast of veteran actors for its production of “Steel Magnolias,” which opens tonight at the Everett Performing Arts Center.
Jayne Muirhead, who has appeared on Seattle stages for 25 years, plays the big-hearted Truvy, the owner of Truvy’s Beauty Spot. She’s equal parts sass and common sense, beauty advice and sympathetic ear. Her shop is stocked with such amenities as a pot of hot coffee and copies of Southern Hair magazine.
She’s got a new assistant. Annelle (Susanna Wilson) is a ditzy young woman with a messy past and a new-found passion for the Lord, but she knows how to work a roller and back-comb and bouffant.
Marianne Owen, last seen here in “Driving Miss Daisy,” is M’Lynn. A take-charge lady, she runs the town’s mental health clinic while attempting to run the life of Shelby, her daughter.
Shelby (Kathryn Van Meter, a Village Theatre veteran) is a nurse who works with premature babies. As the play opens Shelby is about to be married to a good-old-boy attorney and she’s at Truvy’s for a wedding-day hairdo. Shelby is diabetic, and a health crisis in the beauty shop foreshadows things to come.
That’s the sad part.
The comedy, and there are big helpings of it in this Southern gumbo, comes in large measure from Clairee (Ellen McClain), a genteel widow who takes every opportunity to zing the bad-tempered Ouiser (Laura Kenny).
Ouiser, who has a bad word for just about everyone, clears the air with this remark: “I’m not crazy. I’ve just been in a very bad mood for the last 40 years.”
Jeff Steitzer directs “Steel Magnolias,” which plays through March 20.
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