![]() ![]() Conversation in the womblike sanctity of Truvy’s salon on Saturday mornings - the slot Truvy reserves for her regulars - revolves around hair, naturally enough. OK, this attitude might seem a bit condescending. As the title suggests, they are portrayed here as the unsung heroes of a lost America, their delicate, fleeting beauty (the magnolias) belying their inner strength (the steel). ![]() The six women who gather in Truvy’s garage hair salon (the play’s only set, lovingly designed by Stephen Gifford) are so different in temperament, so mutually loving and supportive, so essential to one another’s emotional sustenance, that they seem like facets of a single soul or roots of one tree. One of few dramas with all-female casts (male roles were written for the movie), “Steel Magnolias” is even rarer in that its characters aren’t catty witches designated for morally satisfying comeuppances. THEATER: Our weekly column on what’s opening » I challenge the most sophisticated of you not to cry at the end. The batter for “Steel Magnolias,” as Cameron Watson’s revival at Actors Co-op endearingly demonstrates, may not cook up into haute cuisine, but it has just enough salty, sour, bitter and umami, along with the sweet, to engage the entire palate. But of course, as experienced bakers know, without a pinch of salt, sugar can be just plain cloying. Like a lot of Southern cooking, this play - and the 1989 movie based on it, for which Harling wrote the screenplay - doesn’t stint on the sugar. “That’s why I serve it over ice cream to cut the sweetness.” ![]() “It’s a cuppa flour, a cuppa sugar, a cuppa fruit cocktail with juice, and you mix and bake at 350 till gold and bubbly,” Truvy says. Cuppa Cuppa Cuppa Cake is so straightforward, it doesn’t even require an index card: In the first scene of the play “Steel Magnolias,” Robert Harling’s 1987 love letter to small-town Southern women, two Louisiana friends share favorites from their recipe boxes. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |