By JULIE YORK COPPENS
Tribune Staff Writer

SOUTH BEND -- It's been a long, dry summer on the Curry ranch -- and the heifers aren't the only ones fading for lack of nourishment. A widowed father, the resentful son who's taken over the family business, a younger son who seems to have more hormones than sense and a daughter destined for spinsterhood. ... This is the drought-ridden household Bill Starbuck blows into one hot August evening, clinking his spurs, waving his magic stick and promising to make it rain for the mere price of $100.
Incredibly, the sensible Currys take him up on it -- and even more incredibly, as N. Richard Nash's old-fashioned and utterly predictable play "The Rainmaker" wears on, so do we. Evocatively designed, sensitively directed and beautifully (if not always audibly) acted, the production now at Indiana University South Bend still suffers a few dry spells of its own, but we buy it. We're seduced by the simple fantasies this fresh-faced student company, especially Joe Kurtz's touchingly vulnerable Starbuck, is selling: That a stranger might sweep into town someday and help us find all the love and understanding we've been missing. That a plain girl's inner beauty might somehow be made visible, not just to others but to herself. That we might hope for a drizzle and be answered by heaven with a downpour.
Director Isaac Walters gives his cast time to divine the more complicated story between the obvious outlines of Nash's script, which was made into a movie in 1956 with Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn. We see the possibility of mixed motives in eldest son Noah's (Tim Shaw) silent simmering: Maybe a part of him is afraid that if sister Lizzie ever does get married, he'll be eating raw eggs for breakfast, alone, for the rest of his life. And in another quiet moment, we see the conflicted desires of Deputy File (Brett W. Miller), a man so hurt by a runaway wife that years later he can't bring himself to adopt a stray dog. What if the dog ran away?
The Lizzie character, played by Crystal Ryan -- with eyes as expansive and starry as Nolan O'Dell's earth-toned open range of a set, she never quite convinces us of Lizzie's plainness -- is much more vocal with her emotional turmoil. Smart, strong but painfully insecure, Lizzie retreats behind her manic chatter and mindless housework, and while Ryan occasionally overdoes it (as in Lizzie's goofy, disastrous flirtation with File), the actor also finds great poignancy in the pauses, first as Lizzie begins to believe Starbuck's claims of her beauty and later as this old-maid-in-training suddenly has more proposals than she can handle.
For some viewers, though, Walters' easy pacing, which makes these engrossing performances possible, will feel like more of a liability than an asset, as the first act stretches to almost 90 minutes. The director could tighten up the scene changes (which have minimal physical requirements) and some of the lighter dialogue sequences without taking away the emotional power of the big confrontations, but it would be a mistake to rush this mid-20th-century play for the sake of early-21st-century attention spans.
Just as Starbuck can't make it rain if the Currys aren't behind him, even to the point of making themselves look ridiculous, a play like "The Rainmaker" takes an investment on the viewer's part. Those who pony it up for the IUSB production, running through Saturday in Northside Hall, will find themselves rewarded beyond all expectation.