Production archive
Steel Magnolias
2006 season · Production archive
Steel Magnolias is the story of a circle of friends whose lives come together in a small parish in Louisiana. These six women chitchat, needle and harangue each other through the best of times — and cry, comfort and repair one another through the worst. When challenged by powerful forces, the true strength of their friendship is revealed.
- Written by
- Robert Harling
- Directed by
- Robert Kramer
- Ran
- July 7 – August 12, 2006
- Cast
- Sally Clodfelter · Theresa Adams · Deirdre O’Connor · Carol Rust · Kristin Fuhrmann Clark · Terry Ann Watts
About the production
Harling wrote the play in ten days after his sister’s death, and its six women are the whole cast — no men appear, though they are constantly discussed. That makes it unusually well suited to a small company, and the director’s programme note for this production is candid about exactly that calculation: male actors are at a premium in Colorado, he wrote, while fifty women turn up at every audition, and yet most plays call for twice as many men as women.
The production was billed as back by popular demand, carrying over cast and crew from a staging at another Denver playhouse. Sharing companies between small houses in this way was normal practice in the city and is one reason the same names recur across this archive.
What the press said
“a powerhouse piece of theater…the wonderful Deirdre O’Connor’s confidence and charm holds the piece together…The production is first-rate… ★★★½”
“I’d put this production smack up against any production of Steel Magnolias anywhere in the universe. It is that good, and then some…this is one production that should not be missed.”
Where it sat in the season
It was production 5 of 8 in the Vic’s 2006 season. It followed Other People’s Money (May 5 – Jun 17, 2006) and was followed by Lysistrata (Aug 18 – Sep 23, 2006). The full year is set out on the season calendars page, and every production the theatre staged between 2005 and 2011 is indexed in the production archive.
The house’s standard pattern was Friday and Saturday evenings at 7.30 with a Sunday matinee, over a run of six to eight weeks. With seventy-five seats, a full eight-week run put roughly 1,800 people through the room — which a 500-seat theatre does in four nights, and which is the single fact that explains most of what the Vic chose to programme.
Also in this section: the director’s programme note for this production.
This page is part of the production archive of the Denver Victorian Playhouse, a seventy-five-seat theatre in the basement of a northwest Denver house that staged its last performance in 2011. Details here are restored from the theatre’s own records as they were published at the time; press quotations are reproduced with their original attributions and nothing has been added to them.