While spending the better part of a year and a half starring in Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award-winning Broadway hit “God of Carnage” — about two couples who come to blows while discussing an altercation between their sons — Chelsea-based actor/playwright Jeff Daniels found the seed for his newest play, “Best of Friends,” now having its world premiere at the Purple Rose Theatre.

“I really was fascinated, from the inside looking out (of ‘Carnage’), at Yasmina’s structure,” said Daniels. “It’s just a relentless series of dominos, then the curtain just came down at the end of it. The Broadway audiences went nuts for it. So being immersed in that, I wanted to take that structure and bring it here, bring it to this part of the country. And friendship has been something I’ve wanted to write about. The fragile nature of it. Why in one decade you’re friends, and then the next decade, you’re not.”

Like “Carnage,” “Friends” focuses on two couples. But they’re childless, and rather than getting together to hash something out, they’re just on the verge of becoming close friends.

“They talk early on about, ‘We have so much in common. We like the same things,’” said Daniels. “It’s finding that couple that, as one of the guys says, ‘is a lot like us, only younger. And we like ourselves, so why shouldn’t we like them?’ It’s the wrong reason to go into a friendship. But that’s what the play is.”

Just as these close ties are being formed at the play’s outset, one member of the foursome commits a perceived slight at dinner that sends the couples’ relationship in an entirely different direction — that of one-upsmanship.

“The character who does the initial action that triggers all this — people are getting, he can feel it, that they’re moving in too close, and he knows that he doesn’t want to spend any more time with this couple than he already does,” said Daniels. “ … It’s kind of this big, four-person group hug, and then one of the people steps out of that hug and says, ‘Whoa, time out,’ and does something to sabotage the forward progression of this thing that’s hurtling downhill.”

“I think a lot of the people who are going to be sitting in our audience will have lived through some segment of this play,” said director Guy Sanville. “It’s funny, but it also asks a really interesting question: Given the right circumstances, are we capable of doing anything? … I think the answer is yes.”

“Friends” makes several jumps in terms of place and time, so that, for instance, the same set stands in for both couples’ homes.

“There’s definitely a lot of talking to the audience about, ‘This is what I said next, and what happened, and this is when I do what I’m about to do,’” said Daniels. “That’s me trying to make the audience feel like the other couple, or that friend that you’re sitting with at the coffee shop. I tried to really … put my arm around the audience in a very friendly way. And then you stick the knife in.”

“Best”’s two couples differ in terms of age (one couple is about 10 years older) and class (the older couple is wealthier than the other), and they meet after the two men are randomly paired up on the golf course.

“I think part of the humor comes from, … You know those things you always wish you’d said or did? They do them,” said Daniels. “They eventually do them. One at a time, evening the score, … while struggling to kind of still have hope that they can turn this into a friendship as soon as they even the score.”

And maybe this is why, as one person told Daniels, the friends you have in your 20s aren’t usually the friends you have in your 30s, and so on.

“Maybe there is no such thing as a true friendship in these people’s case,” said Daniels. “They’re trying. They hope for it. They’re always looking for that couple that can complete them. Make them human. But it seems, at least for this play, to be a never-ending search.”

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.