Women explore bonds of friendship in ‘Steel Magnolias’

Gossip, love, grief and the bonds of friendship are explored on stage at Warner Robins Little Theater’s production of “Steel Magnolias,” which opens Friday.

Director Crystal O’Leary-Davidson said the play, which was made into a movie in the late 1980s, was originally written by Robert Harling and was based on the loss of his sister. Writing the play was how he worked through his grief, she said.

Set in the 1980s in fictional Chinquapin, Louisiana, the play spans a year, with the entire play taking place in Truvy’s beauty salon, “where all the ladies who are anybody” come to have their hair done, according to O’Leary-Davidson.

The play explores the bonds of female friendships — through the good times and the bad — through the relationships between wise-cracking Truvy (Tyrene Neil), her assistant Annelle (Kacy Polk), the town’s rich curmudgeon Ouiser (Leslie Castle), eccentric millionaire Clairee (Cathy Collins), and career woman M’Lynn (Celia Hohnadel), whose daughter Shelby (Samantha Burkes) is about to marry a rich-but-outdoorsy lawyer.

“The play focuses on Truvy’s beauty salon as a safe place for the women to gather,” she said. “They talk about a lot of the events that take place in the film, and you get to know these women really well through their relationships with each other.”

Although O’Leary-Davidson said she didn’t necessarily cast people who look like the actresses from the movie, she said the women are all experienced actors and are age-appropriate for their characters. She said the audience will enjoy recognizing famous lines and moments from the movie and will get a fresh experience from seeing these new interpretations of the characters.

Neil, who plays Truvy, has been acting all of her life and actually played the same role more than two decades ago at WRLT, shortly after the movie came out. When the opportunity came again to audition for the play, Neil said she wrote on her audition card that she wanted to try out for the part of Ouiser, but had written that she would also be willing to do other parts. The director decided to audition her for Truvy, and she got the part.

“I do love the role and was tickled to be able to do it again,” she said. “Maybe she is more like me than I realized.”

Neil said she enjoys that there is humor in the play — even in the midst of sorrow — because the characters realize that even in sorrow, there is a way to find laughter and joy. She said this idea resonates in her own life.

“When things are hard, stressful or sad, I try to find the silver lining, to be joyful even in the sad times,” she said.

This story was originally published March 2, 2017 at 7:02 AM with the headline "Women explore bonds of friendship in ‘Steel Magnolias’."