Lisa Emery and Reed Birney Photo by Joan Marcus

Birney plays George, a cranky Kentucky farmer with a passion for science and astronomy. When we first meet him, sitting in a lawn chair waiting for the commencement of a lunar eclipse, he is sobbing. He claims later that he is mourning the recent death of his favorite dog in a very long line of canine affiliations, but in Birney's movingly enigmatic rendering, there are hints of a deeper sadness and a palpable sense of dread.

George's wife Em, performed with exquisite affective clarity by Emery (who was in the original Off-Broadway cast of Dinner with Friends), is eternally optimistic and unwavering in her familial devotion. For every bleak diagnosis or sinister presumption that George raises, Em downplays with a cheerful explanation or pragmatic justification.

Throughout, Margulies skillfully unveils the complete arc of a marriage, from high school sweethearts to their presumed final moments. Using the lunar eclipse as an analogy, the play charts the gradual, shifting changes in the couple's relationship, mirroring the subtle onset of the penumbral phase. For instance, pointing out that George has become "gruff" over the years, Em says, "You weren't like this. You were sweet. This is what time has done to you. Hardened you up."

During the totality phase, representing the moon's passage through the deepest shadow, George and Em address the most profound strain on their marriage: the death of their 36-year-old drug-addicted adopted son. Additionally, the rise of the blood moon parallels George's intense perceptions of foreboding. "Everything we've known, and thought was true," he rails, "that our parents and teachers and preachers told us ... It was all a lie. And now, whatever was holding it all together, it's falling apart. And it's all gonna come crashing down." Only the re-emergence from the earth's shadow and the light of day can dispel the panic and impending doom.

Directed with a gentle touch by Kate Whoriskey, the production adroitly skirts the occasional heavy handedness of the metaphorical excesses and circumvents the periodic predictability in the character development.

The play also benefits from stunning design elements. Walt Spangler's verdant Kentucky field set (which evocatively is referred to as a giant dog graveyard, a "Doggie Gettysburg") beautifully captures the characters' bucolic environment as well as their feelings of isolation. The symphony of nature as replicated by Sinan Refik Zafar's sound design heightens the mood, and the lunar eclipse that George and Em (clad in Jennifer Moeller's costumes appropriately depicting a late-middle-aged farmer and his wife) are watching is breathtakingly realized in Amith Chandrashaker lighting and S. Katy Tucker's video design.

The real stars of this celestial show, though, are Birney and Emery. Their performances bristle with the authenticity of a decades-long marriage, baring all the emotional scars, simmering annoyances, and lingering squabbles of a long-married couple. Perfectly matched, their characters serve as a compelling extension of Margulies's previous explorations of marital harmony. While not as fully gratifying as Dinner with Friends, Lunar Eclipse offers a thoroughly satisfying, light repast.