In ‘Steel Magnolias’ in Chesco, some of the cast has worked together for 50-plus years

In a small fictional town in Louisiana, the six women centered in Steel Magnolias have forged a community among — and an ever-deepening relationship with — each other. In a real town in southeastern Pennsylvania, a group of women who have worked together for decades are bringing those characters and those deep bonds to life at People’s Light in Malvern.

“You don’t have to worry about if that familiarity is there,” said Janis Dardaris, who portrays Clairee, the widow of the town mayor. “You just sit on the stage and it’s there. There’s no working at it. I sometimes wonder, what would it be like doing this play with completely different people that I didn’t know?”

As the women portray lifelong friendships, they have been able to find that depth and heart because of their own close connections. They’ve known each other for decades through their work in the arts — up to 50 years, in some cases, with some combination of them overlapping in at least a dozen shows in recent years.

Talking together in a room at the theater days before the Sunday opening, they occasionally finished each other’s sentences, extrapolating thoughts for each other.

Abigail Adams, the production’s director who has directed the women in several other performances, has a sense of how each of them works — how much time it takes for them to process, when to ask for something in their performance and when to hold back.

Claire Inie-Richards, who plays young nurse and newlywed Shelby, and Susan McKey, who plays her mother, M’Lynn, have portrayed a mother-daughter duo three times over 20 years.

Though with each role they learn each other anew, “There’s no substitute for time,” Inie-Richards said.

Brynn Gauthier, who makes her People’s Light debut in her portrayal of Annelle, is the new addition to a group of women whose history stretches back decades.

At first she thought it might be intimidating to work with people who have known each other and worked together for so long, but it felt like she got to be part of the journey of the cast getting to know each other in a new way through this show.

That familiarity is not without its challenges, though. Marcia Saunders sometimes feels “Marcia” surface in place of “crusty” Ouiser.

“That’s been challenging because of my relationship with these people and this institution, which is like a home to me,” she said.

Told as a series of moments in the women’s life within the safe confines of Truvy’s in-home hair salon, the play opens with Truvy and newcomer Annelle preparing Shelby for her wedding. Shelby and mother M’Lynn discuss wedding preparations, while local grouch Ouiser gripes about their property line.

Clairee arrives, windswept, from a dedication ceremony honoring her late mayor husband. Annelle, originally reluctant to give any information at all about herself, breaks down, admitting to the women that her husband has disappeared — with her money, her car, and her jewelry. She finds immediate support.

It’s just the start of how the relationships evolve and deepen in Robert Harling’s play, set in a southern town in the 1980s.

Even though the viewer slowly learns more about the women’s external lives and pressures — confronting joys and tragedies — the play never leaves the salon.

“I love how this play – it’s about these women. It’s about this place. It’s about us. And I just think that makes for such a strong story, and I think more poignant than the movie,”McKey said.

Gauthier observed that there’s something inherent to women’s friendships in how they can discern when to tiptoe and when to confront in their care for each other.

“Truvy’s place is the place where they can be fully themselves, and they really can’t be fully themselves in their domestic arrangements, not in the same way,” Adams said. “They can’t be as outrageous, and they can’t be as vulnerable.”

It’s the vulnerability, that unyielding support for each other despite personal differences, that the women think today’s audiences will connect with. Though the story — popularized by a film adaptation released in 1989 starring Julia Roberts, Sally Fields, and Dolly Parton — is often thought about as a sentimental tearjerker, it’s injected with lightness, Gauthier said. .

“It’s kind of like the best episode of like Friends or a TV show you really love, where you just are spending time with these people,” she said.

“There’s always going to be intrigue and interest and drama, but there’s an element of just sitting with these people that you really enjoy and getting to experience them really fully,” Gauthier said. “It’s really nice to just have these characters that are so easy to fall in love with.”

“Steel Magnolias” continues through Feb. 15 at People’s Light, 39 Conestoga Rd. in Malvern. Information: peopleslight.org or 610-644-3500.