The swashbuckling adventure story that spans the lickety split 90 minutes of “Shipwrecked! An Entertainment” evokes the tall tales of misadventure at sea, castaways, survival and heroism. Yet the true magic of David Margulies’ 2007 play is in the telling – most delightfully executed by the superb cast in the current North Coast Repertory Theatre production, led by Ron Campbell.

He plays Louis de Rougemont, a 19^th century English adventurer who regales the audience with his incredible life story, from birth to joining a pearl diving crew at 16, being shipwrecked on a deserted island, rescuing Aborigines lost at sea and returning home with them. Louis marries an Aborigine woman and raises two daughters in the Australian outback before finally returning to London, 30 years after he first set sail.

When his tale is published, Louis becomes a celebrity, beloved by children, would-be swashbucklers and even the Queen of England.

A great narrative, but the play wouldn’t be very thought provoking or challenging if it ended there.

The playfully rambling title -- in its glorious entirety: “Shipwrecked! An Entertainment: The Amazing Adventures of Louis de Rougemont (as told by himself)” -- should be a tip-off. Louis is a huckster of the first order, and eventually outed as a charlatan.

With the best hucksters, though, it’s so much fun being seduced by the ruse. And Campbell gives a thoroughly charismatic, funny and all-out physical performance as Louis. He breathes dynamic life into accounts that sound suspiciously similar to “Robinson Crusoe,” “Treasure Island” and others in the genre.

He is aided in his yarn ripping by Yetide Badaki and David McBean, who play a variety of characters and keep the flow of props moving smoothly with the lightning fast pace. Badaki does a wonderfully salty drunken sea captain and creates a humorous yet touching portrait of Louis’ Aborigine lover. Perennially hilarious McBean is at his best as Louis’ canine sidekick and the Queen of England.

Director Matthew Wiener does fine work in infusing this production with requisite wonderment -- from Steven Cahill’s sound design of appropriate recorded music and on-stage noisemakers to Matt Novotny’s evocative lighting, Marty Burnett’s effective Victorian set and Bonnie Durben’s inexhaustible props.

Louis, more of a grand illusionist than a snake oil salesman, says in his own defense, “If I was guilty of anything, it was dabbing a few drops of color on the drab world.”

That might’ve been just what James Frey, Misha Defonseca, Margaret Seltzer or Herman Rosenblat would say (and those are just the fictional memoirists that Oprah fell for!). Still, playwright Margulies makes a good argument for the tall tale, and more importantly, for the imagination, and perhaps more specifically, the imagination of the theater.

“Seeing is believing, is it not?” Louis asks near play's end. It’s a loaded question on the stage.