A Delicate Ship ***

The Playwrights Realm is presenting this intriguing new play by Anna Ziegler at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Sarah (Miriam Silverman), a social worker in her early 30s, and Sam (Matt Dellapina), a budding musician, have been a couple for several months. Their quiet Christmas Eve at Sarah’s apartment is interrupted by a sudden knock at the door. The uninvited guest is Nate (Nick Westrate), Sarah’s close friend since childhood. Bearing champagne and weed, Nate insinuates himself into their evening. Sam and Nate have neither met nor heard of each other before. Nate is an intensely self-centered overgrown child, filled with existential dread that the world existed before him and will go on after him. He has longed for Sarah since childhood as the only person who can save him and has showed up that night to persuade her to choose him. Like Icarus in Breugel’s famous painting, he fears that his suffering may go unnoticed. Each character breaks the fourth wall periodically to tell the audience about previous as well as future events. The urge to please one’s parents is a theme that recurs. The title comes from the image of time as a ship delicately navigating the shoals between past and future. The events of that evening have a profound effect on all three characters.The actors are all excellent, the set by Reid Thompson is evocative, the costumes by Sydney Maresca are fine and the direction by Margot Bordelon is smooth. The playwright is not always in full command of her material, but shows considerable promise. Running time: 75 minutes, no intermission.

Too Much Sun ***

While Nicky Silver’s new play starring Linda Lavin at The Vineyard may be a disappointment to those expecting a variation on his hit play The Lyons, It can still provide a lot of enjoyment to those willing to consider it on its own merits. Although it offers another juicy role for Lavin, it has quite a different spirit from the earlier play. This time out Lavin plays Audrey Langham, an actress of a certain age who has a meltdown performing Medea in Chicago and shows up, unannounced and unwelcome, at the beach house where her estranged daughter Kitty (Jennifer Westfeldt) and her husband Dennis (Ken Barnett) are spending the summer. Kitty is an unhappy schoolteacher and Dennis is an ad man who has taken the summer off to write the Great American Sci-Fi Novel. The next-door neighbors are Winston (Richard Bekins), a wealthy widower, and his gay teenaged son Lucas (Matt Dickson) who sells weed to the locals. They are joined by Gil (Matt Dellapina), the assistant to Audrey’s agent, who has been sent to bring Audrey back to Chicago. Over the course of the summer, new relationships blossom as old ones wither, with a few surprises along the way. The balance tips toward more drama and less humor, although there are many funny moments. Some of the characters are insufficiently developed and there are some awkward structural flaws (Silver seems unable to resist including at least one blackout with a character addressing the audience). The set by Donyale Werle is quite attractive and Michael Krass’s costumes are fine. Mark Brokaw’s direction is assured. The play's final line is memorable. Despite the play’s flaws, I found it consistently enjoyable.

Outside People **

Is there room in New York for a second play about an American experiencing culture shock in today's China? The producers at Vineyard Theatre and Naked Angels apparently think so. We now have Zayd Dohrn's new play opening at the Vineyard. It does not really share much in common with "Chinglish." The comedy is much darker here. Each of the characters is in some sense an outsider -- Malcolm (Matt Dellapina) is an extremely neurotic schlemiel from Hoboken whose Chinese former roommate at Stanford, David (Nelson Lee), has invited him to visit and possibly live in Beijing. David's years in America have alienated him from his roots and left him with a taste for non-Chinese women. His current girlfriend Samanya (Sonequa Martin-Green) is the daughter of an African diplomat, raised in China, who will never be considered Chinese. On Malcolm's first night in town, David fixes Malcolm up with Xiao Mei (Li Jun Li), an attractive girl from the countryside trying to make it in the big city, with whom Malcolm promptly falls in love. Even the audience is at times an outsider, because there are a couple of scenes where the Chinese dialogue in not translated. The motivations for what transpires are complicated and not always made clear. The cast is excellent and the situation is sufficiently intriguing that my hopes were raised. Ultimately, I found it just good enough that I wish it had been better. Evan Cabnet's direction is smooth and the sets by Takeshi Kata are attractive and functional. Running time: 90 minutes without intermission.

Note: Dohrn, the son of Weather Underground members Bernadine Dohrn and William Ayers, should know about being an outsider -- he was raised in hiding for his first four years.