Tickets are on sale now for Robert Harling’s “Steel Magnolias,” performed live at Lincoln Theater on Dec. 12-14. For four performances only, Lincoln County Community Theater (LCCT), the theater company in residence at Damariscotta’s Lincoln Theater, will bring this beloved comedy-drama was last seen at the theater in 2004 and returning in this all new production.

The comedy-drama is a timeless story about the bond among a group of Southern women in Chinquapin, Louisiana, and features an all-female cast of local actresses.Written in just 10 days, “Steel Magnolias,” Robert Harling’s first play, was inspired after his sister Susan died of complications from diabetes. Wanting to ensure that she would be remembered, Harling wrote the script as a tribute to her strength, his mother’s, and of the women who supported them. The play premiered originally off-Broadway in 1987 at the WPA Theater in New York City, then moved on to the Lucille Lortel Theater, an off-Broadway playhouse in Manhattan’s West Village, where it broke records and went on to run for three years. After its success on stage, the script was adapted to the big screen and released as a feature film in 1989, starring Sally Field, Dolly Parton, and Academy Award nominee Julia Roberts. Today, the script is performed by both professional and non-professional theaters all over the world.

In the LCCT production, under the direction of John Mulcahy, the action of “Steel Magnolias” is set in Truvy’s (Nanette Hennig Fraser) hair salon, a location free of men, and where all the ladies who are “anybody” come to have their hair done. Joined by her eager new assistant, Annelle (Christina Larson Belknap); the eccentric millionaire with a raging sweet tooth, Miss Clairee (Nina Tilander); the local social leader, M’Lynn (Jennifer True); M’Lynn’s daughter, and the prettiest girl in town, Shelby (Emily Sue Barker); and finally the town’s rich curmudgeon, Ouiser (Suzanne Rankin).

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 12 and  Friday Dec. 13; with two shows Saturday, Dec. 14 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available through the Lincoln Theater box office, located at 2 Theater Street Damariscotta, during office hours; Tuesday – Thursday, from 10 AM to 1 PM. Tickets may be purchased at the theater starting one hour before curtain.  Tickets prices are $15 for adults, $13 for Lincoln Theater members, and $5 for youth ages 18 and under. Filled with hilarious repartee and not a few acerbic but humorously revealing verbal collisions, “Steel Magnolias” is heartwarming, hilarious, and tragic, balancing beautifully these intimate moments between friends - women who are as gentle as magnolias yet strong as steel.