All-Star Local Lineup Gives Life To Sacramento Theatre Company's 'Steel Magnolias'

Looking back, I realize that what put me off “Steel Magnolias” was the 1989 movie version.

I didn’t see it at a cineplex because my life at that time was revolved around my very pregnant wife (turned out she was carrying twins) and the $100,000+ of damage that the Loma Prieta Earthquake inflicted our Watsonville residence. I had no time for Tinseltown pablum.

I was eventually subjected to a screening of the movie version of “Steel Magnolias” during a cross-country flight, but by then I had a squirming, diapered infant in my lap, and I unplugged my headphones partway through the film. The movie struck me as corny, saccharine and sentimental, “baked by Hollywood” as a commercialized celebrity vehicle for Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton, and the rest of the ensemble cast. I wanted none of it.

But more recently I’ve seen several productions of playwright Robert Harling’s original play, which enjoyed a long run on Broadway in 1987. Harling confessed in a folksy interview in the charmingly-titled Deep South periodical “Gun and Garden” that he wrote the play as a memorial to his deceased sister. She, like the character Shelby in “Steel Magnolias,” was a diabetic who bravely/foolishly proceeded with a risky pregnancy against her doctor’s advice, and eventually paid for that decision with her life.

Harling added that he wrote “Steel Magnolias” (his only theatrical play, he primarily writes for the screen) so that his late sister’s orphaned child would someday understand what a wonderful woman his departed mother had been. Little wonder that the characterizations in the theatrical version rise to a higher level than they do in the watered-down, commercialized Hollywood knockoff. The playwright was speaking directly from his heart.

“Steel Magnolias” is very much a tale of six decidedly different women representing various paths in life, who develop a common bond over the course of their everyday lives. This is particularly the case with the original theatrical version (Hollywood diluted the story by adding some male walk-ons and scene changes in the movie version).

In the play all scenes are in a beauty parlor in a rural, out-of-the-way Louisiana town. Casey McClellan, director of the current production at the Sacramento Theatre Company, opts to address this setting by working in Cajun zydeco music, which works better than the glossy, commercial Nashville pop I have experienced in the sound design of other productions of the play.

The STC version is carried by an impressive lineup of local actresses of various ages:

• Carrisa Meagher (a remarkable young Sacramento actress who’s been in several Capital Stage productions) is a natural as charismatic Shelby, the lovely (and alas doomed) young woman who is determined to become a mother, even though she has been warned that a pregnancy might kill her.
• Versatile veteran Janis Stevens (who excels at playing domineering women of a certain age) is the imperious Clairlee, a wealthy widow who becomes owner of the local radio station.
• Jamie Jones, another versatile veteran, plays Shelby’s busy, worried mom.
• Janet Motenko, a talented character actress of a certain age, plays the eccentric, good-hearted Ouiser
• Natasha Hause plays the gossipy beauty shop entrepreneur Truvy.
• Kayla Johnston is the new-to-town — and increasingly evangelical — hairstylist Annelle (who, before the play begins, mysteriously split from the man who may-or-may-not have married her).

It’s an all-star lineup of local actresses, and yolked to playwright Harling’s more potent original script of “Steel Magnolias,” the outcome is downright magical at times.

This one’s definitely worth a look, even if (like me) you didn’t care for the movie.

The Sacramento Theatre Company production of “Steel Magnolias” continues through Dec. 9.