If popular women’s magazines also produced plays for their audience the product would be something like “Steel Magnolias,” the 1980s mama-drama by Robert Harling now at the Welk Resorts Theatre north of Escondido.

Set in a rural Louisiana beauty parlor when hairspray still ruled, this pastoral epic has bits of nearly everything interesting to bored housewives: birth, death, holiday decorations, prayers, secrets, clothes, baby pictures, sex and recipes. (One cup each of flour, milk and fruit cocktail, baked at 300 degrees until golden!)

No men are seen but they are infrequently absent from the discussion of the moment, mostly characterized as lazy, indifferent, ungrateful, blood-thirsty, anti-romantic or just absent.

There are gags aplenty, mostly framed by Harling as gallant defiance of misfortune. Some, though, sound like generic asides from the trunk: “She’s so dumb she thinks Sherlock Holmes is a subdivision.”

But the general tone of the piece is that life goes on, the sun will rise tomorrow and good women will persevere.

This production is quality stuff of its sort. Michael Learned, once an Old Globe Shakespearean if memory serves, plays the meanest woman in town as an eccentric old dear. Tiny Cathy Rigby, world-class in both gymnastics and “Peter Pan,” is a strong and dignified rock of her family. Christa Jackson is the brassy broad who runs the beauty shop with the motto “There’s no such thing as natural beauty” and she nails the milieu better than any of her mates.

Our own Rosina Reynolds, though too young and beautiful for the role, does immaculate support as an aimless widow who finds purpose and the younger generation is represented by Amy Sloan, as a fragile but spunky Southern belle, and Emma Fassler as a down-but-not-out victim who comes to Jesus more thoroughly than really necessary.

Brian Kite directed with a genial touch, encouraging significant glances and spirited nobility. John Iacovelli’s set is really sleek and special, the lighting and costumes are just fine but what’s with the amplification? The house only seats 330 in a nice spread with nobody further away than 11 rows? Can’t actresses project anymore? Or wouldn’t area microphones be sufficient?

The Welk facility itself hasn’t changed much at all in 29 years. There’s still the bizarre lobby display on Lawrence Welk history. You still have to leave the freeway and zip down the two-lane Champagne Boulevard. They’ve added a fifth matinee but the air still smells nice in the evening and there’s still apparently a buffet brunch or dinner served somewhere nearby.

I don’t make the trip much any more but somebody does. And I salute the management for their continuing professionalism even if they don’t manage to get the playwright’s name onto the title page of the program.

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