THEATER REVIEW VOICE OF THE PRAIRIE : Radio Days : The Santa Paula Theater Center presents playwright John Olive’s nostalgic look at 1925.

“Voice of the Prairie,” playing at the Santa Paula Theater Center, is an interesting experiment, a generally involving piece of nostalgia by playwright John Olive.

It’s 1925, and an exciting new form of mass communication is sweeping the country. Davey Quinn, a young man from Nebraska with a gift for storytelling, has just been summoned to New York City: Robert Sarnoff is establishing a national broadcasting company--the National Broadcasting Co.--and has invited Quinn to host a new program.

Quinn’s most popular stories deal with his travels, nearly 30 years before, with a young blind woman, Frankie Reed, who has since disappeared. In a stage emulation of flashbacks, two sets of characters are occasionally onstage simultaneously, representing Quinn and Reed looking at incidents in their past.

“Voice of the Prairie” is more about character and evoking an age of innocence than it is about plot, and Olive’s sketches are so quick in some cases that those in the audience who are not already familiar with the period--with the fad for Dr. Brinkley’s goat-gland transplants, for instance--might be somewhat puzzled about what’s going on, and why entrepreneur Leon Schwab is so concerned with the rapidly expanding power of the Department of Commerce as it establishes the Federal Communications Commission.

Melanie Chapman and Raymond Baird Ricord play the young Frankie and Davey, with Jill Macy and Tom Hall as their older selves. Hall--the play’s central character--is a likable fellow, sort of a cross between Will Rogers, Motel 6 spokesman Tom Bodett and the less wild-and-crazy side of Steve Martin. But it’s Ricord and Chapman who may make the strongest impressions because of their ability to bring a dreamlike quality to their characters and to the way director Robin McKee stages their scenes somewhere between “The Grapes of Wrath” and a Grant Wood painting.

Ross Collins plays pioneer broadcaster Schwab as a man with a vision, but with the kind of cheap enthusiasm that would serve him well as a salesman for any kind of product. Pete Trama alternates among three roles, most effectively as Davey’s itinerant storyteller father.

Ron Rosen plays a rather stiff minister rather stiffly, and Nancy Wolfe is attractive as Susie, who’s something of a flapper.

McKee, set designer Julia Breeding, lighting designer Lawrence Oberman and costume designer Frances Erwin display imagination and resourcefulness; Brian Wilson and Jerry Sider create some very strong images through the use of sound.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“Voice of the Prairie” plays at 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 7. Admission is $11, or $9.50 for senior citizens and students. The Santa Paula Theater Center is at 127 S. 7th St., Santa Paula. For reservations or information, call 525-4645.