MCT’s ‘Voice of the Prairie’ a ‘dreamy’ experience

By PATRICIA HARRELSON
For The Union Democrat
July 26, 2007

The history of radio mingles with a sweet-hearted folk tale in “Voice of the Prairie,” the latest production at Murphys Creek Theatre.

The play brings together itinerant radio salesman Leon Schwab and bachelor farmer David Quinn in a story that reveals the power and imagination of radio when it first streamed across the country in the early 20th century.

Schwab is a pitchman who sets up transmitting equipment in a small Kansas town and coaxes Quinn to tell a story on the radio. Reluctant and dubious at first, David blossoms into a storyteller who charms listeners across the country with romantic tales about his boyhood adventures roaming the countryside with his first love, a blind runaway girl named Frankie.

Shifting back and forth from David’s youth in 1895 to his radio storytelling in 1923, playwright John Olive creates an impression of slippery reality.

The impression connects contemporary audiences with the phenomenon felt by early radio listeners. Dubbed the “magic of the ether” by Schwab, the sound emanating from the wooden boxes was transfixing.

Director Graham Scott Green uses this feature of Olive’s play in conjunction with crafty staging and character transformations and the setting beneath a starry sky to similarly mesmerize.

Five actors play various characters on a rustic set that represents locations from Kansas City to Mountain Home, Arkansas. Under Graham’s direction, the five actors move in ever-more agile transitions from hay loft to gazebo to the wood-planked stage.

Jack Souza, who plays David, initially appears in the role of David’s father, Poppy, a drunken Irishmen whose rambling yarns sow the seeds of storytelling in his son.

Later when Souza assumes the role of David, he retains remnants of the younger Davey’s anxious naiveté, a facile accomplishment since the role of Davey is actually played by Josh Gren. This recurrence of traits is one example of the dreamy fluidity that permeates the play.

Gren anchors the performance in the role of Leon Schwab, a crass but engaging opportunist. Schwab’s enthusiasm for radio embodies RCA’s plan to make radio a household utility. Gren instills hilarious spirit into the pioneering notion.

Tara Kayton’s portrayal of the blind girl is not only convincing, Kayton positively sparkles with the joyful, audacious, endearing selfreliance that causes both David and the audience to fall in love with her.

Another instance of ethereal reality emanates from Kayton’s simple but nimble costume changes on stage that transform her from young Frankie to adult Frances and back again.

If the play falters at all, it is during segues meant to signal the shifting story times. Though Lara Ford and William Trier are lively and entertaining as they cavort across stage announcing the years in which scenes take place, the rapid hurling of significant lines that are yet to come is confusing rather than illuminating.

Ford’s talent is fully apparent in the role of Susie, a fan who visits David. She’s gooey with adoration and oozes flighty sincerity in a recognizable but somehow antiquated groupy style.

Trier plays the widest range of characters from Frankie’s father to the sheriff to the jailer. His acting skill is most evident in a comical portrayal of James, an asthmatic Methodist minister who wants to marry the adult Frances. Wheezing and clutching his coat sleeves, Trier waxes between holier-than-thou and pitiful.

The voices of these actors carry wonderfully across the grassy amphitheater which director Green cleverly integrates as part of the stage. In the opening scene, Poppy and Davey interact with the audience as Poppy begs a slug of whiskey to sustain his stories.

Later the amphitheater is plunged into darkness and the actor’s voices spring from all directions as Frankie asks the audience to know her blindness from inside its darkness. The effect is uncanny and a pivotal moment in the play, for the audience is now surely invested in the outcome of these character’s lives.

What will happen? Will David and Frances have a future together? Will Leon, the raconteur, suffer a fall? In the end, will these characters fly as Frankie urges Davey from the edge of the hayloft door?

“Take us up into the sky!” shouts Frankie. In 1923, wooden boxes seemed to “pull ghosts out of the sky,” opening the doors of imaginative possibility for radio listeners.

“The Voice of the Prairie” does the same for playgoers in the Theatre Under the Stars.