"We enjoy being nice to each other. There's not much else to do in this town," says Truvy, the amiable proprietor of the Louisiana beauty shop that serves as the backdrop for Robert Harling's play, "Steel Magnolias."
Nice to each other? In truth, Truvy, her assistant Annelle and their four loyal customers of varying personalities and generations stretch the outer boundaries of "nice to each other" beyond recognition.
These six strong, perceptive women collectively feed a reservoir of love and understanding that nurtures them when the vicissitudes of life come a' callin': widowhood, marital stress, family conflict, illness and, ultimately, death.
"Steel Magnolias," currently running at the Colonial Players of Annapolis, is a funny, emotional, unpretentiously human play that is, at once, warm and insightful.
The sassy resilience of these remarkably original women keeps the emotionalism from becoming oppressive and, in the end, one is uplifted by the way the preciousness of their friendship affirms the preciousness of life for all of us.
As Truvy, the good-natured beautician who'd "walk on her lips to avoid criticizing anyone," Martha Manning admirably creates her place as the unthreatening inquisitor and willing listener whose unquirky solidity draws out the hopes, fears and eccentricities of those around her.
Annelle is a wonderfully drawn character whose personal and theological ditziness provides much amusement, yet whose childlike simplicity yields profound clarity when the chips are down. Alexia Rein plays her for all she's worth; the rich nuances of her personality come vividly to life whether she's making coffee with water that had recently been boiling hot dogs, decking the halls with her goofy home-made Christmas ornaments, or trying mightily to make sense of the sadness life sometimes has to offer.
Tissie Bowen's Clairee, the wife of the town's deceased mayor, is an easy character to underestimate for, at times in Act 1, she seems more interested in chit-chat and recipes than in life. Deceiving indeed, for in the heaviness of Act 2, she becomes a source of irreverence that unexpectedly shifts moods and dispels any soap operatic tendencies the dialogue might engender.
Bowen, I'd have to say, seemed a little studied in Act 1; her timing was a tad slow and her movements, particularly one cross, were measured, but she became the powerful force the script calls for by the time the second act rolled around.
