Steel Magnolias (play)
| Steel Magnolias | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Robert Harling |
| Characters | Shelby M'Lynn Ouiser Clairee Truvy Annelle |
| Date premiered | 1987 |
| Place premiered | WPA Theatre New York City |
| Original language | English |
| Genre |
Drama Comedy |
| Setting | Truvy's Beauty Spot, Northwest Louisiana, Chinquapin Parish |
Steel Magnolias is a stage play by American writer Robert Harling, based on his experience with his sister's death. The play is a comedy–drama about the bond amongst a group of Southern women in northwest Louisiana.
The title suggests the "female characters are as delicate as magnolias but as tough as steel". The magnolia specifically references a magnolia tree they are arguing about at the beginning.
The play opens with discussion of Shelby's wedding day to her fiancé, Jackson, in the fictional northwestern Louisiana parish of Chinquapin at Truvy's in-home beauty parlour where the women regularly gather. It covers events over the next three years with Shelby's Type 1 diabetes and how the women interact at times with conflict but in the end resolved friends: Shelby's decision to have a child despite the complication that could result from her condition, Clairee's friendship with the curmudgeon Ouiser; Annelle's transformation from a shy, anxious newcomer in town to a good-time girl then repentant revival-tent Christian; and Truvy's relationships with the men in her family. Although the main storyline involves Shelby, her mother M'Lynn, and Shelby's medical battles, the underlying group-friendship among all six women is prominent throughout the drama.
Based on the family experience of the play's author Robert Harling following the death in 1985 from diabetic complications of his sister Susan Harling-Robinson after the birth of his namesake nephew and failure of a family member donated kidney. A writer friend following the death advised him to write it down to come to terms with the experience. He did but originally as a short story to give his nephew an understanding of the child's deceased mother. It eventually evolved in ten days to a play performed Off-Broadway before being adapted for Steel Magnolias movie (1989).
Harling, maybe based on his short dry experience in the field of law ("not many laughs in Brown v. Board of Education") felt it important to include the way the characters utilized humor and lighthearted conversations to cope with the seriousness of the underlying situations. Harling wanted the audience to have a true representation of what his family endured during his sister's experience.
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