10
Aug
2015
Thursday's performance of Next to Normal didn't appear as well-attended as the rest of the Clinton Area Showboat Theatre's opening nights this summer. Yet while this musical trip through a family's struggle with the mother's mental issues may not be as familiar as a Cats or Steel Magnolias, this isn't a piece to miss. The songs by Tom Kitt and book by Brian Yorkey are powerful testimonies to the reality of mental illness for those who suffer from it, and those who suffer through it alongside a loved one.
Not long into author Robert Harling's ensemble dramedy Steel Magnolias, the Louisiana beautician Truvy asks local socialite Clairee Belcher about the recipe for a delicacy called "cuppa cuppa cuppa," the ingredients for which are a cup of flour, a cup of sugar, and a cup of fruit cocktail. Truvy says it sounds awfully rich, and Clairee replies that it is, "so I serve it over ice cream to cut the sweetness."
In the years since she received a 1988 Academy Award for Moonstruck, Olympia Dukakis has appeared in more than four dozen feature films, television movies, and miniseries, and has continued to be a widely respected theatre actor and director. So it seems somehow prophetic that her illustrious career began, as she says during a recent phone interview, with a production that blended the stage and celluloid.
As Ouiser Boudreaux, the easily agitated Southern matriarch with the permanently fixed scowl and "more money than God," Dee Canfield enters the Green Room Theatre's production of Steel Magnolias as though shot through a cannon.
