A young parolee brings unforeseen magic to a forlorn little town in “The Spitfire Grill,” running at Ross Valley Players through Feb. 23.

Biblically named Gilead, Wisconsin — with presumably a single eatery — may never enjoy such magic, whose shadowy elusiveness gives enormous texture to a production beautifully conceived by James Valcq and Fred Alley, and sensitively directed by Jay Manley.

For the audience at Ross Valley Players, magic happens immediately when lead actor Kyra Lynn Kozlenko begins singing to launch the show, backed by a three-piece band at rear stage left —keyboardist Nick Brown, guitarist Evan Ceremony and violinist Nina Han.

Kozlenko appears as Percy Talbott, a spunky West Virginia native who’s released after serving five years in prison for a heinous but justifiable crime of revenge.

Her Southern accent a giveaway that she’s not a Wisconsinite, Percy’s first encounters in Gilead are with Sheriff Joe Sutter (Kyle Stoner), assigned as her parole officer, and grill owner Hannah Ferguson (Kelly Ground), her new employer. Hannah is an irascible harridan with a bad hip and a mean streak, who’s worked thanklessly for decades to keep the Spitfire Grill afloat. She’s also got a backlog of personal and familial torments that she doesn’t wish to discuss, which we learn as the story unfolds.

Percy busses dishes, cleans the floor, learns comical rudiments of cooking and slowly befriends a mousey young woman named Shelby Thorpe (Julianne Bretan), the grill’s only other employee. Shelby’s domineering but fundamentally good-hearted husband Caleb (Brad Parks), an out-of-work quarry foreman, is a regular at the Spitfire, as is Gilead postmistress and busybody Effy Krayneck (Jane Harrington), whose urge to pry is so extreme that she sometimes opens her neighbors’ mail simply because she can’t help herself. Bradley Markwick is quite effective as a mute, mysterious recluse living in the woods outside of town.

An upbeat musical drama with well-positioned comedic elements — Harrington is hilarious as the postmistress, and Ground has her moments — “The Spitfire Grill” is an incredibly engaging production not merely because its core story is about real people with real problems, but because it’s delivered with elegant sensitivity by a talented cast with tremendous voices and superb sense of timing. Not one of them is amplified, but all are perfectly intelligible, to the benefit of those in the audience who prefer natural sound — even those in the farthest seats.

Much of the story and character development is conveyed in song, nicely balanced against the efforts of the band. Acoustically and dramatically it all of it flows together beautifully on a rustic set by Ron Krempetz (construction by Michael Walraven, props and set painting by Dhyanis).

Well-crafted films and stage plays feature primary plots and subplots that intersect and affect each other. In “The Spitfire Grill,” Percy’s pursuit of a new life in a new town is only the foundation on which rests an incredibly satisfying web of other stories — her relationship with Sheriff Joe, her friendship with Shelby, Shelby’s personal growth, Hannah’s medical and financial woes, and the ultimate fate of the grill itself. We feel and understand all of this and more.

Scriptwriting coaches often say that there are only a handful of basic stories — boy meets girl, good guy versus bad guy, a quest or adventure, a cluster of compounded mistakes and so forth. Other common setups include “a stranger comes to town” and, of course, any redemption story.

“The Spitfire Grill” is a superb blend of these latter two — a beautifully performed and heartwarming tale of ordinary people achieving something simple but transcendent. Some performances are already sold out. By all means, book your tickets now.

Barry Willis is a member of the American Theater Critics Association and president of the SF Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle. Contact him at barry.m.willis@gmail.com.