STEEL MAGNOLIAS

16 July 2026

Steel Magnolias is one of those plays/films that I probably wasn’t interested in back in the late 1980s. A collection of southern belles gossiping in a hairdressing salon in a small country town. Too much pink and hairspray for my taste at the time. But as a resident of Perth now, I’m taking every opportunity to see whatever shows come to town and the cast of Steel Magnolias appealed: the wonderful Lisa McCune plus other actors that have peopled our stage for years such as Tracy Mann and Belinda Giblin. So on a wet night, we headed into His Majesty’s Theatre for what turned out to be a delightful night of entertainment.



It’s a story about community and family, about illness and death, about care and friendship. And as I watched, I thought of the stories from Afghanistan where beauty salons were, until 2023, one of the few places where women could met. But alas, the Taliban have closed them too. 

Each character is richly painted: the daughter with diabetes, the owner of the salon, the Mayor’s widow, the young woman who has lost her husband….each of them is painted well by actors and well served by costume designer and director although I was rather bemused to know why Giblin’s grumpy older character kept turning up at the hair salon because her short grey hair never seemed to require even a wash. 

Rather than replicate the reviews that consistently give this show 4 or 5 stars, here’s one from X-press Magazine that captures the essence of the production well: 

https://xpressmag.com.au/review-steel-magnolias-at-his-majestys-theatre/

 

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