STEEL MAGNOLIAS by ROBERT HARLING at the LYRIC THEATRE, BELFAST on the 17th of June 2026
STEEL MAGNOLIAS by ROBERT HARLING at the LYRIC THEATRE, BELFAST on the 17 th of June 2026 Steel Magnolias is a play that seems to be in the southern Gothic genre but it’s a traditional melodrama, more Meet me in St Louis than A Streetcar named Desire. The conservative aesthetic means that the play has one set, the interior of Truvy’s hair salon, decked out in lipstick colours and conventional, period furniture (the play is set in the 1980s). Like Meet me in St Louis the play marks itself out temporally in terms of traditional seasonal festivities like Xmas, the highpoints of the year when families tend to come together. Steel Magnolias is a dialogue centric drama and plot is virtually irrelevant. We are told in the first scene that the central character Shelby (played by Simone Collins) is diabetic and that she can’t have children. By the second scene we learn that the doctor advised Shelby not to have children, should rather th...