'THE VOICE OF THE PRAIRIE' TUNES INTO BYGONE ERA.

Byline: Evan Henerson

Theater Critic

"It's the wave of the future," media huckster Leon Schwab says about that curious squawk box known as the radio. "One hundred years from now, people will be wearing these in their hats."

That hats prediction notwithstanding, the man had some foresight. Turns out Americans in 1923 had a thirst for clicking a dial, hearing some music and taking in a well-told tale, especially when it's Davey Quinn's voice coming out of that box.

"The Voice of the Prairie," John Olive's ode to the power of radio and storytelling, is as gentle as it is homespun. Yes, the play contains a mean drunk or two and an occasionally menaced heroine, but there's barely a whiff of conflict in David Rose's production for the Colony Theatre. Basically, Olive treats us to two hours of watching a very good storyteller and the men and women who people his tales.

Clearly raconteur-ing is in the wind. Consider "Prairie" a not-too-distant cousin to the Geffen Playhouse's "Shipwrecked," yet another three-actor play about the narcotic power of storytelling. Of course, where "Shipwrecked's" Louis de Rougemont told fanciful adventure tales, Olive's protagonist has a different game.

Quinn (played by Tom Dugan), is an even-keeled Nebraska farmer who, as a kid (Michael Matthys), learned the art of narrative from his gabby Irish grandfather, Poppy (Dugan again). Subsequent years of on-the-road adventure with a feisty blind heiress named Frankie (Ashley Bell) supplied Quinn with enough tales to make him a celebrity once he hits the airwaves a couple of decades later.

This being the 1920s, Quinn's stories are more Garrison Keillor than Howard Stern. Nonetheless, federal regulators are beating away at Schwab (Matthys again), a scam artist, who recruits Quinn into radio, makes him the Voice of the Prairie and takes him on the road.

Olive hops his action across the Midwest, from 1895 (when the young Quinn is vagabonding) and the character's radio days of 1923.

We see Quinn's adventures played out on stage more often than we hear them recounted, and the playwright errs in the second act by wrapping up the loose ends of Quinn's life with pretty little bows. How much more compelling might this tale have been had "Frankie the Blind Girl" remained un-found!

That said, Rose's actors are versatile and put on a darned good show. Dugan's folksy Quinn is as even-keeled as his portrayal of Poppy is full of blarney. Matthys brings jittery radio hustler Schwab into comic focus. We believe the guy when he says he hasn't slept in 21 years. Schwab probably doesn't deserve a bailout, but, as previously noted, Olive's is a kindhearted tale.

Bell, too, is excellent as both the blind girl and the semi-respectable teacher Frankie becomes. Bell also wrings the evening's best laughs as a radio groupie who nearly loses it over meeting Quinn.

David Potts' high, wooden set with rural backdrop and versatile gates functions nicely for "Prairie's" multiple locations. Jeremy Pivnick's lighting and Cricket S. Myers sound do their parts to re-create the look, sound and feel of another era.

And what an interesting era it was. If it accomplishes nothing else, "Voice of the Prairie" is enough to make a person go home, turn on the box, navigate away from the music and look for a story (paging Mr. Keillor!) that doesn't depend on a high-definition flat screen. Once upon a time, that's how celebrities were born.

Evan Henerson [phone]

[e-mail]

THE VOICE OF THE PRAIRIE - Three stars

>Where: Colony Theatre, 555 N. Third St., Burbank.

>When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday (no performances this weekend), 3 p.m. July 12, 8 p.m. July 17 and 24; through July 27.

>Tickets: $37 to $42. [phone], Ext. 15.

>In a nutshell: Trekking gently across the Midwestern airwaves with a born storyteller.

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Photo:

Michael Matthys, front, and Tom Dugan star in "The Voice of the Prairie," a gentle journey across the Midwest of the 1920s, at Burbank's Colony Theatre.