Steel Magnolias

Codsall Dramatic Society presented Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling as part of the Codsall Community Arts Festival. Steel Magnolias, best known for its 1989 film adaptation starring Julia Roberts and Shirley MacLaine, focuses on the lives of six formidable Southern American women, who use the local hair and beauty salon as a form of therapy and as a place to have a voice in a male dominated community. The play is a universal story of community, celebrated individuality, love, friendship, sacrifice and grief.

Having never seen the film I was interested in the story from the very moment that I arrived into the auditorium with the wonderful staging, detailed properties and an audience seated at 45 degrees to the corner of the room. The pre-set was an open stage with two key performance areas, the hair salon and the nail bar & waiting area.

The play focuses on the story of Shelby (played by Alexandria Hughes) and her journey from type 1 diabetes to her eventual death from complications from kidney disease. The play has a slow start with a very long first scene but the cast did well in introducing their own characters and adding much needed humour to allow for a contrast in Act two.

The direction provided by Sammi Rhead allowed for the full performance area to be utilised, although staging was tight for the performers in the hair salon at times.  There was good use of sound, music and radio announcements, which helped in creating the background atmosphere and good lighting inside and outside of the set.

The accents, diction and characterisations from each of the six actresses were great and maintained throughout the performance. There was a real sense of close community amongst them. Stage Manager Nic Tildesley deserves much praise in stepping into the role of Clairee at the last moment and managed to juggle a number of props whilst performing with a script.

Well done to the set, props and costume team who had clearly worked very hard, I was particularly impressed by the hair-washing facilities with real working showerhead and sink.

There were two memorable and outstanding scenes in this production, which were handled with great sensitivity. The first being when Shelby has a diabetic seizure and the reactions required by the rest of the cast and the second the emotional out pouring of grief by M’Lynn.  You could hear a pin drop in the audience for both of these scenes.

Alexandria Hughes was well cast in the role of Shelby and she gave a naturalistic, believable performance drawing the audience in with her independence and vulnerability. The final scene of saying good-bye was memorable and set up the final last scene beautifully.

Paula Lavan as M’Lynn (Shelbys Mother) at the end of Act Two gave us a tremendous and controlled performance and delivered the hurt, anger and believability with great passion. A great performance and not easy to achieve.

Wendy Peterson as Truvy (the salon owner) is pivotal in keeping the community together, providing much needed humour and at the same time displaying her skills at hairdressing. A believable and naturalistic performance.

Rachael Goodson is a great character actress and gave us a strong performance as Ouiser. The role is a great role to play and requires a real commitment to the character. Rachael’s characterisation in this role was very impressive and her humour very dry.

Jackie Sherlock also gave us a believable and strangely unnerving performance as Annelle. Jackie showed us her internal dialogue through her reactions to those around her and provided us with clarity to her characters personal journey.

Well done, Codsall Dramatic Society in evoking an emotional response from the audience a great piece of theatre.

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