DILLARD, Ga. – One thing you know when you pull six women together in a beauty salon: You have no idea what will happen next. But what happens when you stage an all-woman play about an all-woman locale, directed by a male director?
Why–misunderstandings, of course. Foy Tootle, longtime directing mainstay of North Georgia Community Players in Dillard, is taking on Steel Magnolias, every moment of which is set in a Louisiana beauty salon—not exactly his usual hangout.
The show runs the first three weekends of February at the NGCP theater in Dillard City Hall on Franklin Street.
Directing the director
Veteran professional actress Joy Ruhe plays Truvy, who owns the salon. She laughed that Tootle didn’t seem to understand originally how, exactly, these places work.
“We had to tell Foy a lot about salons,” she said, “like, no one would ever step between a woman who’s getting her hair done and her mirror.” And as far as moving the actresses around the stage: “Once you sit down to get a manicure, you’re there for a looong time,” she said. The actresses can’t run around the stage, she explained, or it won’t look like the real thing.
Tootle is used to staging wild farces, including Moon Over Buffalo and three installations of Four Old Broads, which all involve a lot more slammed doors, drunkenness, and general stage movement. Steel Magnolias, a heartfelt dramedy, has more just-plain-heart-to-heart talk, and a lot less frenzy.
The beloved, sentimental play, which also was a successful 1989 movie starring Shirley MacLaine, Sally Field, Julia Roberts, and Dolly Parton, is rich in female chemistry and emotion. Tootle says he was delighted to offer local actresses the opportunity to grapple with it. In fact, he chose it in part because of the plethora of female talent he sees all around him in the local theater community. The auditions met expectations; “Some 30-40 women auditioned for the play, so I had my choice of terrific actresses,” he said.
The show is a cast reunion
Regular patrons of the 150-seat venue will recognize the show’s actresses, all six of whom
have performed together or separately in earlier NGCP shows; their camaraderie will soon be in evidence.
One of them is Ruhe, a New Hampshire native who has made her way–via Florida and Ohio–to Otto, N.C.—neighboring Dillard–in 2020. She played the Mother Superior in The Sound of Music last year, directed by Rebecca Bilbrey (also a Magnolias cast-mate), as well as the villain in the recent Four Old Broads comedy.
Magnolias strikes a gentler tone. “It’s so poignant,” said Ruhe, whose part was played by Dolly Parton in the film. “It’s just a great story about the friendship of these women. And it’s a complicated show…There are so many lines, so many props, so much blocking and so much that could go wrong. But we have all worked together before; we have each other’s back…. that’s a great feeling.”
Ruhe has seen the show from two different angles; in her 20’s, she played the ingenue, Shelby. Now, just past retiring as a career consultant, Ruhe is perhaps the most talkative of the characters—and, she adds, had to learn rudimentary hairdressing to convincingly play the part.
For Rose Hricko, 25, who spends her workdays teaching Social Studies to 7th graders at North Habersham Middle School in Clarkesville, she can naturally relate to the stress her character, Shelby, endures. “Everyone has family who goes through what Shelby does,” said Hricko, whose part was played by a young Julia Roberts, to Oscar-nominated acclaim, on screen.
‘Live, or worry’: Can’t do both
And everyone faces life choices like Shelby’s, Hricko adds. Her favorite line reflects that, when she tells another character, ““You can’t live a life if all you do is worry.” The actress adds: “But when you love someone, you desire their good even when you disagree.”
Hricko, who hails from northeastern Pennsylvania, was drawn to the area in 2022 by Life Teen Missions, a Catholic ministry based in Tiger. She liked the area, decided to stay, and ended up in education.
The actress, also an accomplished dancer, previously performed in Moon Over Buffalo, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Little Shop of Horrors. She said Shelby is her most challenging role to date.
For Hricko, like Ruhe, a lot of rehearsal has been “all of us educating Foy as to what women are actually like…At one point, I observed that, in a beauty shop, you would talk to a friend in a neighboring chair by way of the mirror in front of both of you. He liked the idea.”
The actress further reflected: “There’s such beauty in the differences between men and women; Steel Magnolias just highlights the particular dynamic of all female friendships.”
Despite his actresses’ ribbing, Tootle laughed and defended his knowledge of the fairer sex, noting that “the great thing about the show is that our audience already knows Southern women pretty well,” and the buzz of a Southern beauty shop will ring true—even to him.
A Savannah native, Tootle recalls being dragged along to Merle Norman Hair Salon in the coastal city when he was small. “That’s where my own mother got her hair done,” he chuckled.
Where and when
The Steel Magnolias story hits the Rabun stage with performances on Fridays and Saturdays, on February 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, and 21 at 7 p.m. There are three Sunday matinees, each at 3 p.m., on February 8, 15, and 22.
To purchase tickets, go to the theater website.
