Steel Magnolias at TPAC

Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s 25th anniversary season is modest in scope—only four shows—yet offers fare that, when well done, should pull in crowds. Before Nashville theatergoers get to the holiday classic A Christmas Story, Pulitzer winner Proof, and Tony-winning musical Big River, they get a dose of Southern sentiment-cum-comedy with Robert Harling’s familiar tale of smalltown—and definitively estrogen-propelled—Louisiana life. The well-known 1989 movie version with Sally Field is rather different than the play—opening up scenes and settings, adding male characters, etc.— so this original version will be relying on a cast of only six females, though a mighty ensemble it is. Part of the Rep’s own sentimental look backward includes the first-time pairing of the likable Marin Miller with real-life mother Mary Jane Harvill, an actress in her own right years back when the company was in its formative stages. The other players are a veritable who’s who of Music City distaff stagecraft, including Brooke Bryant, Ruth Cordell, Denice Hicks and Martha Wilkinson. Rene Copeland directs, and if all the ladies pull it off, there should be lots of laughter and then nary a dry eye in the house. Southern gentlemen: Be prepared to do your duty in accompanying your wives/girlfriends to one of the chickiest chick-flick-style experiences of all time.
Tuesdays-Saturdays. Starts: Oct. 3. Continues through Oct. 24, 2009