`Scrapbooks’ warmly glistens amid the girl talk

Larry Gray’s “Scrapbooks,” about friendship and sisterhood in a small Louisiana town, is a sweet kissing cousin of Robert Harling’s more celebrated play on the same subject, “Steel Magnolias.” (They both had their premieres in 1987, a few months apart.)

While “Magnolias” centers on the laughter and tears of five women who get together for some down-home girl talk in a realistically outfitted beauty shop, the more modest “Scrapbooks” settles for the laughter and tears of three women who get together for some down-home girl talk in a realistically outfitted kitchen.

Most of the action in Gray’s play takes place around the kitchen table, as the women drink beer, tea, coffee or eggnog, and as they stuff Christmas stockings, stir up a Waldorf salad or paste recipes and news items in their scrapbooks.

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/28791195.html?dids=28791195:28791195&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Jan+22%2C+1990&author=Richard+Christiansen%2C+Entertainment+editor&pub=Chicago+Tribune+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&edition=&startpage=14&desc=%60Scrapbooks%27+warmly+glistens+amid+the+girl+talk