The Voice of the Prairie, now through June 20 at the North Coast Repertory Theatre, is only tangentially about the early days of radio. Rather, John Olive’s sweet tale is a paean to the power of stories and the magic of the performers who tell them.

Jumping between 1895 and 1923 (and back again), Voice of the Prairie spins a yarn about an Irish “shanachie,” or storyteller, who is bumming his way through the prairie states with his similarly gifted son. The father tells stories and then asks for some coins in return, and soon he is spotted by a man who has set up a low power radio transmitter as a way of selling this new gadget for which there was at the time no regular programming. Poppy begins to tell stories on the radio; not many people hear them, but they work as sales tools. Davey, the son, follows in his father’s footsteps many years later, to larger audiences and greater acclaim. His stories are about a blind woman he met named Frankie and their adventures together as rail-riding hobos.

David Meyers, Jason Maddy, and Amanda Sitton

^{Photo by Aaron Rumley}

In an essay included in the program, Mr. Olive wrote that the voices of these characters emerged one by one, and he added them to the story as he heard them. Indeed, the play is quite a shaggy dog, despite running just over two hours, including intermission. What saves it is the charm of the stories themselves and the fact that three performers portray all of the characters, sometimes making quite quick costume changes to do so.

These three performers (David Meyers, Jason Maddy, and Amanda Sitton) turn out to be incredibly well matched, despite apparently never having acted together previously. They bounce off each other magnificently and keep the audience enthralled in the process.

Mr. Meyers plays Poppy and the older version of his son, who by then is known as David, and his is the Voice of the Prairie, effectively weaving his web of imagination via the radio microphone. Ms. Sitton plays both the younger and the older versions of Frankie, and while she creates credible characters at both points in time, her younger Frankie is a lot more fun. Mr. Maddy has perhaps the most challenging task: he must shift persona and voice frequently to play the young Davey, Leon, the East Coast radio hustler, and other parts (all of the performers also speak as recorded voices that provide transitions between scenes, clips “out of the air” that sometimes foreshadow lines yet to come).

Director Lynne Griffin met her partner (assistant director Sean Sullivan) while she was playing Frankie and he was playing Davey in the Old Globe’s 1988 production of The Voice of the Prairie. Sometimes, it’s a mistake to revisit as a director a part that person played as an actor, because the tendency is to want the current cast to play the parts as the director remembered them. Ms. Griffin deftly avoids that error, allowing the actors to find their own voices as these characters. And, her precise pacing of the scenes (kudos for assistance in this regard to Stage Manager Elizabeth Stephens and Production Stage Manager Aaron Rumley) contributes greatly to the audience’s enjoyment of the evening.

I hadn’t seen an NCR production in some time, and I had forgotten that the company’s space is quite comfortable and audience-friendly. The designers took good advantage of the stage space (Marty Burnett did the scenic design, M. Scott Grabau the lighting design), and the other production values were simple but effective (Renatta Lloyd designed the costumes, Chris Luessmann the sound, and Annie Bornhurst the props and set dressing).

The production is dedicated to the memory of Craig Noel, the founder of the Old Globe and the visionary who developed professional theater in San Diego. It is a fitting tribute to the man who enabled companies like North Coast Rep to produce performances of this caliber.

Overall, I’d call The Voice of the Prairie one to put on your “to see” list. The stories may twist and turn some, but they are compelling all the same.

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM HERE