Cast and Creative Team Updated For STEEL MAGNOLIAs at the Capitol Theatre Port Hope

The Capitol Theatre Port Hope has shared cast and creative team updates for the Capitol's highly-anticipated July production of Steel Magnolias, part of the theatre's mainstage summer season.

Director Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster helms this classic play, beloved for its themes of family and friendship, with an all-female cast and creative team. Raquel Duffy makes her Capitol Theatre debut as Truvy, with Belinda Corpuz as Anelle, Carolyn Fe as Clairee, and Brenda Robins as Ouiser, with real-life mother-daughter pair Deborah Drakeford as M'Lynn and Charlotte Dennis as Shelby.

Says Director Ch'ng Lancaster: "I have loved Steel Magnolias for a long time - since watching the movie version with girlfriends as a teen, to pitching it to a theatre more than a decade ago, hoping to perform in it. So when Rob Kempson at the Capitol reached out to me one year ago, with an offer to direct a production, I was thrilled. Women, joy, storytelling, big hair--what could be better!

Now, as I begin rehearsals, I feel a deeper appreciation than ever for Steel Magnolias, for its juxtaposition of the hard and the soft. The little hair salon in the play is a point in between the events of life, a space of repair and preparation. The characters in the show go to the hair salon to get prettied up but bring all their good, bad and ugly along with them, because it can be held in the salon. Not necessarily healed, but held. I think such places are becoming all too rare in life, and I hope the show provokes audiences to protect such spaces, or to create them where they are needed."