AS shows go, the one playing Town Hall tonight isn’t heavy on the visuals: There’s just a band, a sound-effects guy and a bunch of people — one in red socks — standing around some microphones.
Then again, “A Prairie Home Companion,” the brainchild of Garrison Keillor, the man in the red socks, doesn’t pretend to be anything except what it is: a radio show.
Now in its 25th season, this smorgasbord of comedy, music and monologues has nearly 2.7 million listeners every week. And when the Minnesota-based show rolls into town, even big-city folks scramble for tickets.
“It’s an astonishing experience,” says Lincoln Center’s chairman emeritus Martin Segal, who’s seen the show at Town Hall “at minimum, 25 to 35 times.”
“Keillor manages to make us feel that Lake Wobegon is not far from us and the problems in his part of the country are not altogether different from ours. And yet, the music and the stories and the guests are diverse, which, if you’re a New Yorker, you appreciate.”
Sarah Jessica Parker is such a fan that she brings hubby Matthew Broderick. Last year, the “PHC” folks asked her to join them.
“She sang ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ a cappella,” recalls cast member Tim Russell, “and it was the sweetest thing you ever heard in your life.”
What impresses most fans are Keillor’s monologues, seemingly unscripted reveries that meander far and wide before winding up back where they started.
The monologues aren’t so un-
scripted, confides producer Christine Tschida: “They’re on four pages of single-spaced, typed sheets of paper Garrison glances at while the other acts are on stage.”
Set in fictitious Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all of the children are above average,” they touch on rebellion and repentance, infidelity and inferiority, weakness and weather. Lots of weather.
There have been times, says Tom Keith, Keillor’s sound man — who squeezes a box of cornstarch to simulate the sound of freshly crunched snow and rattles coconut shells for horses’ hoofs — when even Keillor got lost in his own musings.
“The stage manager walked out on stage and handed him a piece of paper that said, ‘Say goodnight,'” Keith says. “And he said goodnight and the show was over.”
“A Prairie Home Companion” plays Town Hall tonight, April 15 and April 22 at 5:45 p.m.
Tickets remain only for the April 22 show and are $35 and $40 at the box office, 123 W. 43rd St., (212) 840-2824 or through Ticketmaster, (212) 307-4100. The show is broadcast on WNYC-FM (93.9) Saturdays at 6 p.m. and WNYC-AM (820) Sundays at 11 a.m.