Keillor rules the ‘Prairie Home’ kingdom

The show goes off with nary a hitch, but there were last-minute changes Friday's audience couldn't see:

After dying twice, "Teardrop" rose again. Keillor's monologue — which included the passing of Holy Week, the colors of snot, tornado sirens, pie baking and a bird — ended abruptly, for reasons only he knew.

"That's fun," Webster whispered into his headset. "He's cut it short by five minutes."

And so, in the cold light of Saturday, as rehearsals begin anew for tonight's broadcast, here's the question: How much of the show has Keillor changed overnight?

A lot, it turns out. And he's still at it.

He's rewritten the skits. And then there's the matter of the music therapist. No one has seen him, and Keillor has invited him to perform during the broadcast.

By 2 p.m., Scott and Russell are reading through revisions. Keillor scolds them for ad-libbing.

"Writers don't like to see actors invent dialogue," he says.

"Well, alrighty then," says a grinning Scott, the only female actor. She is the voice of gun molls and sultry, breathless bimbos ("Guy Noir, Private Eye"), dissatisfied wives ("The Catchup Advisory Board," which extolls the virtues of ketchup), and no-nonsense cowgirls ("Lives of the Cowboys," starring herders Dusty and Lefty).

At 3:15 p.m. a nervous-looking man in glasses approaches the stage manager.

"You're the music therapist?" asks Webster.

"Yep."

"You have any idea what you're supposed to do?"

"Not a clue."

Keillor has reappeared. Webster presents Todd Schwartzberg of the McPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis.

A lamb to the slaughter
Like a lamb to slaughter, Schwartzberg trails Keillor across the stage to meet Dworsky. By way of introduction, the boss says: "Todd is going to do a couple of songs with the audience, and you're going to play."

Dworsky nods. Schwartzberg looks terrified.

He has to borrow a guitar from the band.

"In the key of G," Schwartzberg begins. "I play this song a lot with kids. It goes `I'm in the mood to clap my hands, hey how about you?'"

The therapist explains that during this number, the audience will clap, then shake their hands above their heads and then turn in a circle. A therapeutic hokey pokey, as it were.

He's got another mental health song, and it's about emotions. "What kind of feelings do you have?" he sings for Keillor and the band. "Are you happy? Are you frustrated? Are you sad?"

This is a little too treacly for stalwart Lake Wobegon, where one simply soldiers on like a good Norwegian Lutheran and keeps one's pie hole shut.

Keillor doesn't answer. He's wearing that frown he gets when he doesn't like something.

"Feelings" dies a silent death.

Twenty minutes to show time.

Keillor stands in the wings, his monologue its usual mystery.

But it never ceases to produce the same reverent response: Silence descends when he plops on a stool, bends into the microphone and weaves another intimate dispatch from the placid shores of a community so small you never need to use your turn signal, because everyone knows where you're going.

On the counter of his dressing room rests a ragged, half-sheet of paper. He has scrawled "Nearer, My God, to Thee" — the hymn reportedly sung by those going down with the Titanic.

Metaphor or musical selection?

The music therapist is staring straight ahead like a man about to be hanged.

The house lights dim.

In the dark, Dworsky begins to play.

Keillor takes a long breath. "Oh, hear that old piano ..."

The show begins.

Another show in the books
Three hours later, Keillor sags with exhaustion. He has shaken the hand of every fan who stayed after the show, He poses for photos. He signs autographs. He does this every week.

He thinks the monologue fell flat, but doesn't say why. After three decades of doing this, he still can't say what constitutes a good show. He's better at saying what doesn't.

"I don't want to get into self-righteousness or preachiness. I don't want to deal in nostalgia in the slightest degree." He directs these comments to a bottle of iced tea he swirls in his hand like a brandy snifter. His red-rimmed eyes stare at the brown liquid. "I aspire only to silliness."

Yet he built Lake Wobegon, a place steeped in sentimentality. A place where, week after week, millions of wistful strangers slide into the corner booth of a make-believe cafe, feeling that they belong to a place that exists only in Keillor's head.

And next week, he'll invite them back.

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