“Steel Magnolias” unfolds in a Louisiana beauty salon, where ladies paint their nails pink, swap gossip, and share tearful embraces. Beyond its obvious cultural significance (I defy you to tell this play and Ice Cube’s “Barbershop” apart), it also serves as a kind of time capsule. Robert Harling’s 1987 script name-drops Jaclyn Smith, G.I. Joe, and “Circus of the Stars.” As it opened last night at the Lyceum, it established a direct and unexpected portal back to the decade of big hair and small shorts, when Bon Jovi was really Bon Jovi.

All of these are reasons to think well of the revival. If you need one more, consider how smoothly director Jason Moore, his designers, and his accomplished cast have brought it to the stage. “Steel Magnolias” won’t make anybody’s shortlist of deathless American classics – a somewhat longer list, either. The story about tough ladies who help each other through life’s vexations sags beneath the kind of hugging and crying that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David struggled to banish from our shores a decade ago. But here in the new millennium, now that so much of our culture is “sincere” and “tasteful” and “Southern,” it’s an easy fit. I laughed, I cried, it reminded me much less than I feared it would of “Cats.”

Actually I didn’t cry, but I don’t think Mr. Moore will mind. He keeps things cool and dry, playing up the comedy and showing admirable restraint in the weepy bits. Mr. Harling has an inexhaustible supply of punch lines. Too many of the jokes are canned one-liners, but plenty of the comedy grows from character; it has the spark of natural conversation. That Mr. Moore wrings all the laughs from the script may come as no great surprise – he directed “Avenue Q,” after all. What does impress is the graceful work he draws from a wonderful ensemble.

There’s so much charm here you don’t know where to look. The story has charm, Anna Louizos’s aptly bric-a-brac-laden scenery has charm, even the ladies’ names have charm. In Mr. Harling’s Chinquapin, nomenclature seems to be a product of slapping together any old syllables in any old order, regardless of sense or taste: There’s M’Lynn, Ouiser, Clairee, and Truvy. (Truvy? It blows the Yankee mind.)

Played by Delta Burke, Truvy is a brassy brunette, a hair salon proprietress who works steadily to maintain a clean shop and a dirty mind. Her clients and assorted gossip fiends loiter around the converted garage where she has hung a shingle. That all of the people cluttering up Truvy’s furniture are of the female persuasion is a credit to Mr. Harling’s dramatic imagination. Not only did he have the guts to write about the secret beauty-shop councils of women, he all but taunts you with what he’s achieved. “I realized as a woman how lucky I was,” somebody says at one point, proving Mr. Harling fearless. Bold, assured Marsha Mason plays one of the habituees – the crabby, lovable one: You’ll recognize the type if you’ve ever watched TV. Like Ms. Burke, she strains for a laugh here and there, but both actresses are funny.

There isn’t, strictly speaking, a good reason for this play to be on Broadway. It’s not especially theatrical; probably it translated to film just fine. (I can only imagine.) Mr. Moore’s revival justifies its presence here by letting us watch two of New York’s best at work. Frances Sternhagen, demure and wicked, says the meanest things very sweetly, to unfailing comic effect. Sharp, serene Christine Ebersole traverses the play’s gooey sentimental stretches quickly, which is wise: That stuff will eat you alive if you tarry. Both actresses underplay marvelously. There is much to be learned from watching them work the room, beginning with their not seeming to work it at all.

Many the Hollywood celebrity has been abused in this space – on a nearly daily basis, it lately seems, as Broadway careens towards the Tony deadline. So it’s a pleasure to report that for once a screen personality has succeeded. Rebecca Gayheart is sweet and funny here as Shelby Eatenton, the Ophelia of the shotgun-and-pickup set. With little stage experience, she shows real poise; she even convinces as the daughter of the unsurpassed Ms. Ebersole. It suggests the presence of talent barely hinted at in her days as Dylan’s star-crossed arm candy on “Beverly Hills 90210.” As the churchified shop girl, young Lily Rabe joins Ms. Gayheart in making an impressive Broadway debut.

All the famous faces make the show’s first scene into a marathon bout of entrance applause. Four separate ovations turn the practice into a parody of itself. (Ms. Gayheart will get hers once the tourist traffic to the show picks up; young Ms. Rabe will have to wait longer, but it’ll come.) Sometime last year, in a wicked mood, it occurred to me that there’s fun to be had with this ridiculous custom. When people around you start flapping their hands together at some celebrity’s appearance, pretend that it’s not because of who the star is, but what the star has just done. For additional fun, imagine that whatever deed the star has performed really does deserve applause.

Ms. Burke gets her ovation when Ms. Rabe spins her chair around to face the audience. Are we clapping to congratulate Ms. Burke for her ability to maintain a perpendicular seated position, or the beauty-enhancing effect Ms. Rabe has achieved by dousing her colleague’s locks in hairspray? Imagine either one: Both will be good for a laugh. Ms. Sternhagen and Ms. Mason get their applause for chirping some inane greeting while sliding open a door: Walking, talking, and operating a door simultaneously: How can we not applaud? You don’t see that every day.

Ms. Ebersole makes the same entrance, but received a louder ovation. It must be because her entranced proved an even greater challenge: She walked, talked, and opened the door like Ms. Mason and Ms. Sternhagen, but she did it in sunglasses. Rapturous applause rang out everywhere. O Broadway audience, you are so fickle, yet so easy to please.

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