DENVER -- Barbecue brisket needs a microwave like a fish needs a bicycle. To cook pinto beans, you soak them overnight, then simmer them for hours. Sunday pot roast is best when you put it in the oven before the first church service, and take it out after Sunday School and the second service are finished.

The Denver Center Theatre Company's production of Horton Foote's "The Trip to Bountiful" is like a simple, slow-cooked Southern dish. There's nothing exotic about it; no terrible family secrets to unearth. It's not seasoned heavily with drama or even spiced with a lot of big laughs. There is no surprise addition introduced at the last minute to add theatrical flourish.

Instead, like a plate of comfort food, "Bountiful's" magic is in its simplicity. Its ingredients are a slow Southern cadence; the kindness between strangers; a delight in the sound of birds; a deep longing to return to a home long ago abandoned. Characters that look and sound and feel real.

Not that the story is without tension. Lord help the man caught between two unhappy women. In Foote's play, Ludie Watts lives in a cramped apartment in Houston in 1953 with his mamma, Carrie, and wife, Jessie Mae.

Jessie Mae complains incessantly about her mother-in-law, while Carrie either jumps or slumps through the apartment with the confusion of a scolded puppy. And Ludie, unable to take sides or keep the peace, suffers.

Foote wrote the story first as a one-hour teleplay, then turned it into a full-length piece, which premiered on Broadway in 1953. The play serves as a star turn for the Carrie character (Lillian Gish and Geraldine Page famously played the part), the aging woman who longs to return to her small hometown of Bountiful, Texas, against the wishes of her son and daughter-in-law.

DCTC's Kathleen M. Brady makes for a lovely Carrie Watts. She's vulnerable, yet filled with enough gumption to persevere. We can't help but root for her and hope she finds a way to outwit her son, catch a bus and go back home before she expires.

Larry Bull's Ludie is respectful to the point of meekness. But the reasons he doesn't want his mother to travel back to Bountiful, and his own reasons for trying to erase childhood memories, are too hidden. Too buried also are the wounds of Jessie Mae, as played by Sara Kathryn Bakker.

Bakker's Jessie Mae is sniping and girlish. She manufactures some laughter from the audience on occasion, but the performance can go deeper. We don't see Jessie Mae's pain. There are no hints from where her behavior, which borders on cruelty, springs. So she's a caricature -- a spoiled, harpish, unlikable creature.

Julie Jesneck finds the proper Southern sweetness and consideration as Thelma, a young woman Carrie meets on the bus. Randy Moore earns the evening's biggest laughs in a charming turn as Roy, a bus-station attendant. And John Hutton is a compassionate Sheriff.

The production opens DCTC's current season, and it's housed in The Space Theatre. The theater's open, in-the-round environment isn't right for the play's first scene, which is set in a claustrophobic apartment. But it works well later in the play as the action moves elsewhere.

Late in the play during last Monday's performance, after the story had slowly simmered for two hours, many in the audience had a satisfied grin on their faces. They looked pleased and full. Like they were pushing away from the dinner table after a savored meal, cooked slowly.

Contact Camera Theater Critic Mark Collins at 303-473-1369 or BDCTheater@comcast.net.