Photo EXCLUSIVE: Karen Ziemba-Led STEEL MAGNOLIAS at Cape May Stage!

Cape May Stage, South Jersey's premier professional Equity theatre, begins performances of Robert Harling's Steel Magnolias tonight in anticipation of an opening tomorrow, August 4. The production will run through Saturday, September 10 at the Robert Shackleton Playhouse.

The all-women ensemble cast featuring Broadway and TV/Film veterans includes Karen Ziemba as M'lynn (Tony Winner Contact, Curtains), Ellen Dolan as Truvy (Guiding Light, As the World Turns), Nicole Lowrance as Annelle (Dividing the Estate, The Merchant of Venice), Kate McCauley Hathaway as Clairee (I Hate Hamlet, Les Miserables), Marlena Lustik as Ouiser (Foxy, Pousse Café, I Hate Hamlet), and Meredith Riley Stewart as Shelby (Boardwalk Empire, Jeanne Ruddy Dance).

BroadwayWorld has an exclusive first look at the production and below, we bring you the production photos!

Directed by Cape May Stage's Artistic Director Roy Steinberg, the artistic team includes Robert J Martin (sets), Michele E. Sinacore (costumes), Brian Aldous (lighting) and Benjamin Loverin (stage manager).

In Steel Magnolias, six soft-hearted "magnolias" with steely dispositions gather regularly at Truvy's Beauty Salon, the unofficial hub of Chinquapin, La., to chitchat with, counsel, criticize and comfort one another. The wise-cracking Truvy, with the help of her new glamour technician, Annelle, dispenses liberal doses of shampoo, hairspray, free advice and gossip to the town's rich curmudgeon, Ouiser; an eccentric millionaire, Miss Clairee; and the local social worker, and M'Lynn, whose daughter, Shelby, is on the verge of marriage. The play visits these women over the course of two years in which together they experience love, joy, pain, death, and rebirth.

Steel Magnolias premiered at the WPA Theatre in New York on March 22, 1987, and subsequently transferred to the off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Theatre, where it ran for an impressive 1,126 performances and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award. The first "Broadway" production of the play opened April 4, 2005. The story achieved widespread acclaim and popularity in a 1989 movie version.

For tickets and more information, visit www.capemaystage.com.

Photo Credit: Kevin Thomas Garcia