The Sanders Family Singers, returning to the gospel-singing circuit after a five-year hiatus, are preparing to perform their latest number for Pastor Mervin Oglethorpe and his congregation.

It's 1938, the Great Depression has ravaged much of the rural South, and so-called "Saturday Night Sings" by traveling family acts are the only entertainment in town.

Denise Sanders, youngest of the visiting Sanders clan, turns to the good pastor.

"Would Jesus mind if we put a little swing into it?" she asks.

Oglethorpe pauses, glancing over at the disapproving Baptist ladies sitting in the front row of pews. "I think he'd be open-minded about it," he says nervously.

That's when the trouble begins, as the young Sanders singers do the one thing you just didn't do at the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church circa 1938.

Yes, gentle readers, they dance.

And so it goes in the Orange Community Players' production of "Smoke on the Mountain," the relentlessly charming and remarkably funny musical comedy being performed this weekend and next in four Orange County churches.

It's a perfect match of material and venue. Because the musical, written by Hillsborough native and Hollywood actress Connie Ray, is both fictionally set and actually performed in rural North Carolina churches, "Smoke on the Mountain" has a friendly sort of authenticity. The action is staged so that the audience becomes the 1938 congregation, and the time-space continuum starts to feel a little thin.

"I first saw this show in 2006 when some friends were in a production," said director Wayne Leonard - by day a teaching assistant at Cameron Park Elementary. "The show was laugh-out-loud funny and the music was sensational."

The gist: The Sanders Family Singers, invited by Pastor Oglethorpe to perform for his rather orthodox congregation, more or less hijack the evening's services. As the night ambles on, the Sanders Singers regale the audience with stories and songs steeped in vintage Southern Americana - filling stations and cotton fields, dusty roads and vegetable gardens.

The music, performed by the cast and a small group of musicians, is a winning combination of folk and gospel with a touch of bluegrass. The space between songs is filled with anecdotes and monologues from each of the Sanders Family singers.

Careful attention to detail adds to the show's nostalgic appeal. Costume designer Lisa Woodward, who also plays one of the disapproving front-row church ladies, said creating the period costumes was a thrift store adventure.

"You can take a simple modern dress that has something of the right look, add a little bit of lace and the right hat - some of our hats are authentic - and suddenly you have a cast that looks as though they walked in from the late 1930s," Woodward said.

Among the musical's recurring comedic bits is a running gag where Pastor Oglethorpe and the Sanders Family matriarch, Vera, face off by quoting scripture at one another with delightfully passive aggression.

"I was nervous about getting the verses exactly right, because that's the point of quoting scripture," said actress Terri Leonard of playing Vera. "What I really like are the non-verbal interactions between the characters. It's fun to play that up."

Even more hilarity is provided by Kristine Trippodo, who plays the Sanders' irrepressible eldest daughter, June. Center stage for most of the musical's running time - all the players are onstage the entire show, by the way - Trippodo gets maximum comic mileage out of her job "signing" the show to the congregation's hearing impaired.

"Playing June has been extremely fun," said Trippodo, a 2007 UNC graduate and alum of the UNC Women's Glee Club. "Her moments to shine are when she can bang on those tambourines, ding that triangle and sign that music, so I like to play those parts up as much as possible."

Trippodo's sign language is decidedly not authentic, but it is a sustained piece of inspired physical "business" - actor-speak for the routines performers create between their lines of dialogue on the page.

"There are small pieces of real words dispersed in there but for 99 percent of the words, I tried to go as big and as obviously far away from actual sign language as possible," Trippodo said.

All told, "Smoke on the Mountain" is a great example of true community theater. There's a funny meta thing going on when a troupe of players in a North Carolina church is portrayed by another troupe of players in a North Carolina church, 70-odd years apart.

"Taking the play out into the community provides us with an opportunity to bring theater to people who might never have seen one of our shows" said director Leonard. "They may not be willing to drive into Hillsborough to see a show, but they might be interested in seeing a show at their home church.

"Knowing that Connie Ray is from Hillsborough is like icing on the cake. There are people here who grew up with Connie and knew her before she became a big-time actress. It feels like the play has come full circle and landed right back in Orange County where it began and where it belongs."