The Hair’s the Thing in Staging ‘Steel Magnolias’

Shampoo, conditioners, hair spray, rollers, curling irons, rinse caps, smocks, dyes, gels, foil, clips, combs, scissors, dryers and bobby pins--it’s hard to get away from hair in Robert Harling’s dramatic comedy “Steel Magnolias.”

This contemporary paean to female bonding set in a Louisiana beauty shop opens Friday, after a tour that brings it almost intact from Pasadena (where the production opened last summer) to the Wilshire Theatre.

“Basically it’s two plays in one,” drawled New York-based Bobby Grayson, the show’s hair designer/supervisor. “It’s a play about hair--and it’s a story about these women. Everything fits together; it all has to work like clockwork.” Grayson, who’d been doing hair for Marvin Hamlisch’s ill-fated “Smile,” was originally hired to design two wigs for “Magnolias’ ” 1987 off-Broadway debut.

“I saw them doing all the technical stuff that happens in a beauty shop--but (not) doing it right . Like if an implement falls on the floor it should immediately be put in disinfectant. Also, actors are used to having eye contact with each other. But in a beauty shop, if you’re having your hair done, you can’t move your head; you’ve got to talk to the other person without looking at them. They also had to be taught the technique of waving hair, massaging, lowering the chair. . . . “

In both look and manner, he feels the result is close to authentic.

“When the stage manager first called me, he said: ‘The reason I wanted you is because you’re from the Dallas-Ft. Worth area; you know what these little ladies do to their hair every week.” Grayson counseled old-fashioned bonnet dryers, a lot of hair spray and little adventurousness. Newlywed Shelby cuts her hair soon after her marriage--”because that’s what girls in the South do. But it’s more of a matronly look than what hot, short haircuts look like today.”

Naturally, there is some show-biz trickery involved. Actress Carole Cook points out that not everything that seems to be taking place onstage actually is.

“The illusion is that we’re all having our hair done,” she said, noting that Barbara Rush’s character is the only one who’s truly shampooed, set and dried.

Margo Martindale, who originated the role of beauty shop owner Truvy in the New York production, recalled girlish dreams of becoming a beautician. Doing this show has cured her of that notion.

“I really have to do hair up there,” she moaned. “It means being on your feet the whole time, with your hands in the air.”

For Shelby’s character, she arranges a swept-up wedding coif. M’Lynn gets a real manicure, rollers and a comb-out: “It was important to do a hairdo that wasn’t a fake, that was done in front of your eyes.” Her own ‘do’ “is a sort of half-baked beehive, with a hairpiece on top. I have to tease it a little. So I’m fine. Barbara’s hair is the one that takes all the abuse.”

Riders in everyone’s contracts, Martindale added, allow producers to do whatever they want with the cast’s hair; in New York, one of the actresses had to switch to foil wrap-ups after nightly electric curlers caused her hair to fall out. To keep things copacetic on the road, a hairdresser duplicates Grayson’s designs and keeps the womens’ hair cut and healthy.

“Hot lights are very drying,” Grayson stressed. “When he wrote this, Bobby Harling had no idea what the hair would go through.”

He admits his own attachment to hair goes way back. “I used to go to the beauty shop with my mom every week--sit there in a chair and watch the transformation.” By high school, he’d taken over: “I have dyed, cut, permed and done everything to my poor mother’s hair. She always trusted me.”

Originally venturing to New York as a performer, Grayson made the switch in ’81 during a national tour of “Oklahoma!,” when the show’s hairdresser vanished on opening night and he jumped into the breach.

With his career rolling along, Grayson took a year off to attend beauty school.

It doesn’t seem to have hurt his pace. In addition to 85 private clients, he found time this year to simultaneously juggle designing duties on five shows in New York. Nor does he figure the demand will dry up anytime soon. “Shows close,” Grayson said philosophically. “But hair keeps growing.”