(Top) Linda Hammell, Joel Mitchell. (Foreground) Steven O'Brien, Julia Garlotte.

photo by Lynch Travis

It’s uncanny that just as I’m being asked to explain nearly everything to my almost-3-year-old on a daily basis - reading storybooks and watching “Sesame Street” are acts now punctuated every 30 seconds by the questions, “Why?” and “What is that?” - I see Edward Albee’s “Seascape,” now at the Blackbird Theatre, for the first time on a stage.

For the Pulitzer Prize-winning play focuses an aging couple, Charlie (Joel Mitchell) and Nancy (Linda Rabin Hammell), who, after discussing their past and future life together while on the beach one day, are confronted by two human-sized lizards, Lesley (Steven Alan O’Brien) and Sarah (Julia Garlotte), who speak English, but have a large number of gaps in their knowledge, since they just emerged from a life in the water.

So Charlie and Nancy fumble to explain handshakes, love, clothing, why we differentiate between arms and legs, and photos (among other things). Defining so much of the small stuff of daily life - as I’ve realized while chatting with my curious toddler - necessarily forces you to think about their inherent absurdity.

Which is clearly part of Albee’s point. In order to shake people out of the trance bred by mainstream life’s routine, something profoundly startling must happen (i.e., two lizards engage a couple in conversation) that makes them suddenly view the things they usually take for granted through someone else’s eyes. And astonishingly, a situation that might seem gimmicky in the hands of a lesser playwright is instead rendered gripping, so that you’re always anxious to see just what could possibly happen next.

Director Lynch Travis stages the Blackbird production well, so that despite the venue’s postage-stamp-sized performance space - you’ll need to pull your feet under your chair a few times if you’re in the front row - “Seascape” never feels claustrophobic. And Barton Bund’s thoughtfully constructed, nicely contoured and textured beach set, paired with Emily Clarkson’s lighting design, also works to make the space appear larger and deeper than it is.

But the real stars of the Blackbird’s “Seascape” are, well, the stars - which is to say, the show’s marvelous four person cast knocked it out of the park on Friday night. I'll confess that I initially questioned whether Mitchell was simply too young for the role of Charlie; but the actor’s highly focused, nuanced performance soon made me forget all about my reservations. Hammell’s Nancy, meanwhile, is coaxing and warm and chatty, so that we sympathize with her late-life wanderlust. (Indeed, having premiered in 1975, “Seascape” arrived at a feminist moment when an aging woman like Nancy was newly awakened to life’s possibilities, while Charlie repeatedly argues for “rest.”)

O’Brien and Garlotte, meanwhile, do some really fine, sharply attuned physical work as the lizard couple while also powerfully capturing the creatures’ overriding sense of wonder, fear, and innocence.

And while costume designer Sarah Lucas’ bright blue-and-green palette for the lizards gave me pause - wouldn’t their coloring generally be more camouflage-friendly than peacock-like? - the overall look is beautifully finished with patterned face and body make-up. Wearing painted, crystal-studded body suits, and feathery, airy headpieces and tails, these lizards are more pretty and fanciful than they are potentially threatening. But even so, their alien presence within the world of the play is resoundingly achieved.

Bund’s sound design occasionally privileges wit over tone - the Beach Boys’ somnambulant “Surfer Girl” follows the intense close of the first act, to name one example - and hearing the lizard-actors descend a nearby staircase shortly before their first entrances was inevitably a little distracting.

But these are tiny quibbles about a production that generally succeeds marvelously. In a quintessential Albee move, the playwright ends the play with a character saying, “Begin”; and it speaks well of the efforts of Travis and his team that this seeming contradiction feels exactly right for what is, in fact, a starting point for vibrant discussion and reflection.

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.