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 17th of June 2026

L-R Orla Mullan, Eimhear Jackson, Carol Moore and Marion O'Dwyer in Steel Magnolias, photograph by Carrie Davenport


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.

Janet Moran as M'Lynn and Simone Collins as Shelby in Steel Magnolias


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 than must not.  Inevitably Shelby is with child and can’t resist the temptation to let the entire clientele of the hair salon know about it.  A gun is pulled out of a bag in the first scene which evokes Chekhov’s dictum ‘if you introduce a gun in the first act it must be fired by the third.’  What this broadly means is that an element once brought into the drama must be activated at some stage, but the gun is never fired in Steel Magnolias.

Steel Magnolias


Despite the playful irrelevance of traditional elements like plot and eschewing Chekhov’s directive, the dialogue is full of amusingly quotable lines and humorous interludes that kept the audience laughing throughout.  As Truvy Jones (played by Orla Mullan) says (referring to southern men who adore the outdoor life) ‘shoot it, stuff it or marry it’.  The new girl in town is Annelle (played by Eimhear Jackson) who’s just started working in the salon.  It appears that her husband is on the run, she’s constantly questioned by the police about him.  The  characters occupy a privileged white middle-class world, there is no mention of segregation, Little Rock, Martin Luther King or race at all.  The play is unaware of these issues and focuses instead on the trite feminine world, where marriage, family and wealth are the main concerns.

Indeed, there are no male characters at all, though these were included in the film version they are merely alluded to here.  Truvy is the central character of the hair salon, but she doesn’t know everything.  Much of the dialogue could be described as word salad like Shelby’s declaration ‘my colours are blush and bashful’ which are apparently two shades of pink, but it underlines the trite, empty quality of much of the dialogue, the lack of plot.  Ultimately, Shelby’s demise after a failed kidney transplant doesn’t seem real either. 

Steel Magnolias is an excellent ensemble piece, brilliantly and beautifully represented by the Lyric theatre with outstanding performances, set design, sound design, based on a play which attempts, within definite limits, to capture a certain place and time in the USA in the 1980s.  America’s exuberance and confidence is centre stage here.

Paul Murphy, Lyric Theatre, June 2026

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