With someone as experienced as Remo Malcolm directing there was little doubt Steel Magnolias would be a class act.
It is and yet again Shambles Theatre has done itself, and Rotorua, proud.
It was always going to be a hard ask for an all-woman cast to replicate the roles made
famous by a big screen line-up that included Julia Roberts, Shirley McLean and Dolly Parton but "our girls" have done it in spades.
The casting of the six who feature in Malcolm's interpretation of Magnolias was inspired. It's a generational mix that balances some of the theatre's most seasoned members, Wendy Burgess as blonde bombshell Clairee Belcher, Jill Horne, the acerbic Ouiser (Weezer) Boudreaux and Margaret Pitcher as long-suffering mother M'Lynn Eatenton, with the younger Simone Walker and Rhona McGregor who respectively play new-to-town Annelle Dupuy-Desoto and central character Shelby Eatenton-Latcherie.
As real deal southern belles all these gals gelled, sparking off each other with their non-stop wit and home-spun wisdom.
Steel Magnolias spans three years in the lives of life-long friends in the fictionally-named town of Chinquapin and is played out within the confines of Truvy Jones' (Liz Carington) beauty parlour where a wall plaque proclaims "there's no such thing as natural beauty". As Truvy helpfully adds in one cracker of a line "if there was we'd be out of a job".
The Shambles team have stayed true to writer Robert Harling's ability to give tragedy a comic twist. It's a long time since this reviewer's had such a good laugh.
Dramatic high points have to be McGregor's hyperglycaemic twitchings and Pitcher's emotion-charged anger at her daughter's death.
It's by no means not only the on-stage players Magnolias has brought out the best in. Full marks to the set makers for cleverly incorporating running water in the backwash basin where Annelle makes a fine fist of the on-stage shampooing of Truvy's loyal clientele.
Applause, too, for wardrobe. Shelby, the self-confessed style princess of pink, looked perfectly frightful in a spangly cardy of that colour. As for Weezer's parrot themed 80s boiler suit, it was simply eye-wateringly awful.
Of course there were opening night faults. Maybe a few prompts too many (for McGregor in particular) and a handful of seemingly unscheduled pauses, but with so much dialogue to learn and deliver at stopwatch speed we'd have been surprised if the odd line hadn't been fluffed. Some did find Louisiana's distinctive drawl hard to sustain but these are mere quibbles.
So who carried this show? All six of those women who took centre stage, that's who.
This is a must-see production particularly so for this town's serial whingers that Rotorua lacks good theatre.
Steel Magnolias opened on Friday night and runs at the Shambles Theatre until May 5. Box office hours 11am-2pm Monday-Saturday.
WHAT: Steel Magnolias
WHERE: Shambles Theatre
WHEN: Friday April 20 (runs until May 5)