Kevin O'Rourke and Caroline Calkins Photo by Ken Yotsukura

Director James Warwick stages this nearly two hour show outside on a house deck. Designer Patrick Brennan provides a sweet spot, complete with lovely outdoor couches. Moss (Kevin O'Rourke) and Avis (Bella Merlin) appear and you get the sense they've been in a long-term relationship well into their fifties. Their figurative dots, however, do not connect and these folks cannot recall much of anything, including who each is, or who they are to one another. They even discuss the possibility that helicopters one day plopped them down. At one point, Avis explains that she awakened at night to discover Moss's hand on her breast. What does she, what do we, hearing the news, make of this?

Wren (Caroline Calkins), a fit, lively younger woman comes on the scene. She soon brings along bagels, cream cheese and more. She knows Avis and Moss and she might be, as she suggests, their daughter. Maybe. Wren, for a time, is congenial and friendly but that shifts later toward a more mean-spirited persona.

Costumer Jaysen Engel outfits each of the characters with comfortable, warm-weather clothing suitable for a house surrounded by water. This one has water on four sides. As the title suggests, the five scenes transpire during the course of three days. Frankly, the delineation is not important but time is afforded for actors to change clothes.

Avis speaks of the ramifications of sex she experienced at a young age. Moss seems to be aware that his mother is now in assisted living. Wren is even more paradoxical. She informs the couple that she is their only daughter. Wren later goes on about a car accident and a possible murder/suicide.

Blessing's A Walk in the Woods and Eleemosynary are insightful theatre pieces. It's difficult to discern where Blessing is going with A Body of Water. Are these three characters are living in illusion unable to find what is actual and what is imagined? They are juxtaposed against an idyllic setting, given the sweet furnishings and inviting atmosphere.

The three person cast is solid and, well into the run of the show, timing is flawless. Kevin O'Rourke, with stage credits on Broadway and at Berkshire theatre companies, makes Moss believable, as if he's been playing the character for months. The actor, also seen on TV series such as "Boardwalk Empire," "The Sopranos," "Law and Order," and "Veep," paints Moss as a genuine, caring man. Bella Merlin, with 25 years experience in theatre, film, and television, is also a professor of acting and directing at the University of California, Riverside. She is convincing as Avis even if she pushes hard to enunciate all of Blessing's words. Merlin is technically proficient and her delivery easily reaches the back bleacher row of this outdoor theater. The actress's exceptional articulation is a bit much for banter on the deck near the water.

Caroline Calkins succeeds with Wren, who just might be the most complicated and convoluted of the three characters. Here's a young woman, perhaps the daughter, who is sweet, caring, and even loving. No, she's not, you might eventually conclude, since Blessing's dialogue for Wren becomes icy and she could be a fabricator. Then again, we haven't any proof of that or of anything.

So, sit there for a couple of hours and try to figure it all out. If, by that time, you've forgotten the first line of dialogue, that could be more than okay. After all, A Body of Water is also about memory or lack of. Avis and Moss might have been in love and Wren could be their adult daughter. This play is sometimes mysterious, sometimes frustrating, never boring.

A Body of Water: A Play in Three Days runs through July 21, 2024, at Shakespeare & Company, Roman Garden Theatre, 70 Kemble St., Lenox MA. For tickets and information, please call 413-637-3353 or visit shakespeare.org.