STEEL MAGNOLIAS till 28 June
STEEL MAGNOLIAS
by Robert Harling
Octagon Theatre To 28 June 2003
Ruins 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS: 01204 520661
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 June
Fine direction and an impeccable cast show the Octagon at its best.
Robert Harling's play offers skilled realism, though you know you'll never go beneath the surfaces of everyday reality. There will always, only, be a public face kept to private emotions. The landscape's fine, but - despite touching on love, illness and death - there's no voyage towards the molten core of human experience.
Yet it does all this with a narrative and character-developing skill that maintains momentum and draws audiences from amusement to involvement swirling with sympathetic sadness. A good old laugh-and-cry job that may not add up to a bag of nuts in dramatic history, but like the edge-of-seat thriller, is darn difficult to do as well as this.
Truvy's hair salon, the place to be bouffant or slick-shorn in this Louisiana town, is set out in shock-gorgeous complexity by designer Celia Perkins. Its soft female focus yet garish brightness reflects the owner's personality, while Rob Swain's fluent production keeps it looking busy yet unhurried.
Harling has a forceful structural irony: the four scenes are built round events in the life of young Shelby. As they move from marriage through dangerous pregnancy to ultimate absence, these condition others' moods, guiding audience responses.
Amid a fine cast, Katherine Holme's Shelby is outstanding. A smooth, round face that's frame for a smile, brain whirring peaceably over her wedding décor, then just a tad of assertion at insistence on having a child (hints of an unecstatic marriage behind revocation of earlier adoption decisions). Pretty and vacuous pretty vacuous, too. But Holme gives her character increasing dignity and a sense of maturing strength.
It'd be easy to overdo this play fill it with performance frills. But these six play with integrity. Pamela Buchner and Tessa Worsley have a distinctive, yet controlled awkward individuality, while Nicola Bolton's Truvy provides a central thermometer for the proceedings' emotional temperatures.
Samantha Coughlan's intense, often worried-looking snip-and-style assistant is a finely-judged counterweight to Shelby, rising from chaos to life supported by strong religious conviction. And Francesca Ryan is magnificent as Shelby's mother, the relationship's depth drip-fed by playwright and subtle performance to become the sentimental comedy's emotional centre.
Truvy: Nicola Bolton
Ouiser: Pamela Buchner
Annelle: Samantha Coughlan
Shelby: Katherine Holme
M'Lynn: Francesca Ryan
Clairee: Tessa Worsley
KPPD DJ: Mark Heenahan
Director: Rob Swain
Designer: Celia Perkins
Lighting: Thomas Weir
Sound: Andy Smith
Dialect coach: Heather van Straten
2003-07-01 21:45:50