WHEN six very different women meet at a beauty parlour they share their secrets, fears and love for one another.

From weddings to divorces and newborn babies to funerals, the highs and lows of life are all up for discussion in Robert Harling’s play Steel Magnolias, along with some much more mundane neighbourly gossip.

So it not surprising that when tragedy strikes it is to the familiar comfort of Truvy’s salon that they turn to seek the solace and find the support they need to keep them going. Harling’s 1987 comedy drama is being brought to the Oxfordshire stage by members of Faringdon Dramatic Society.

Harling wrote the play shortly after the death of his sister Susan Robinson aged just 33 in 1985 after years of battling diabetes, leaving her husband and two-year-old son.

Steel Magnolias charts over three years what happens when Shelby, played for the Faringdon group by Yvonne Kelly, decides to have a baby despite the complications that come with her Type 1 diabetes.

The role of her mother M’Lynn is taken by Amanda Linstead. Dramatic society member Fiona Merrick said: “The play is by turns touching and funny with some really sad parts and some laugh-out-loud one-liners.“

With the action being directed by Debbie Lock, the remainder of the society’s cast for the show is: Truvy (Helen Thrower); Annelle (Laura Coleman); Clairee (Joan Lee) and Ouiser (Jo Webster). Harling’s play was later turned into the 1989 film of the same name starring Julia Roberts as Shelby, along with fellow leading actresses Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine, Daryl Hannah and Olympia Dukakis.

Steel Magnolias is being performed at Faringdon Junior School, Gloucester Street, from Thursday to Saturday, June 12 to 14, at 7.30pm. Tickets are £8 for adults and £6 for children (under 16) and are available from www.faringdondramatic.org.uk, the Nut Tree, Corn Market, Faringdon, and on the door.