AUGUSTA, GA – The live broadcast of “A Prairie Home Companion” shown at the Regal Cinema Thursday night gave fans of the popular public radio program just what they wanted — a look at what they see on the radio.

Guest artists Heather Masse, Robin and Linda Williams, Jearlyn and Jevetta Steele and Elvis Costello managed to impress without standing out, which is one of the keys of the show’s success. As always, the Big Name — in this case Costello — got about the same spotlight as everyone else, though producers did get some extra mileage out of his accent and his ability to ham it up for some of the skits.

The songs were good and the skits were funny, but of course the highlight for most every “Prairie Home Companion” is the “News from Lake Wobegon,” and it was fun to watch it unfold. Surprisingly, Garrison Keillor’s trance-like performance makes for pretty compelling cinema.

Garrison Keillor

Keillor’s one man show at the Bell was a different kind of show entirely and even more engaging. Without anything but a stool, a microphone and his glasses, Keillor delivered a performance that was more intense and surprisingly loose.

And, it was bawdy. Briefly, but undeniably bawdy. With the determination and glee of a schoolboy defiantly pushing the envelope, Keillor went places in his opening sonnet song good Lutherans aren’t supposed to go…at least not with the lights on, and certainly not with such precision. It was almost as if he’d been there before, and to sing about it…

After finishing the song, he wandered into a story that lasted the remainder of the two hour show. Like all Keillor’s monologues, it was really a meandering parade of smaller stories, but delivered in the tangled way life is delivered — dense with associations, messy with failures and false starts, rich with misery and suffering and, occasionally, hope.

Quiet and commanding, these stories culminated in a magnificent train wreck of an event you could see coming for about fifteen minutes. It involved a smelly dog, an aborted wedding, two massive ducks, 24 Lutheran pastors, a parasail and a hollowed-out bowling ball filled with the dusty remains of a relative.

Like the randy objective of Keillor’s sonnet song, it took awhile to get there, but it was definitely worth the wait.