Quietly Powerful : Stage: Terrence McNally’s ‘Lips Together, Teeth Apart’ at the Gaslamp is funny, touching, thought-provoking.

Nothing and everything happens in Terrence McNally’s “Lips Together, Teeth Apart.”

Two couples spend the Fourth of July together in a beach house on Fire Island where nothing happens--except that they get to know themselves and each other better.

But in the process they touch on everything--mortality, fear, prejudice, love, intimacy and the confusion that comes with day-to-day living as individuals and as partners in relationships. It’s often funny--with a wit that arises directly out of the characters--but, with every breath, it also suggests the beauties, the ironies and the ultimate fragility of life.

The Gaslamp Quarter Theatre Company has staged a quietly powerful West Coast premiere of McNally’s latest work.

The Gaslamp, which continues to struggle financially and which has, in recent productions, struggled artistically as well, strikes a professional high with “Lips Together.” The cast, the direction and the design team are all outstanding. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine this show done better.

Sally (Shana Wride) and Sam (Paul L. Nolan) have inherited the beach house from Sally’s gay brother, who died of AIDS. Sam’s sister Chloe (Kate Kiley) and her husband, John (Kim Bennett), are visiting them for their first weekend there.

The three acts are set at morning, noon and night on July 4, and through the long day’s journey into night, we discover that Sally feels very guilty about never fully acknowledging the sexual orientation of her brother, that Sally and John had a brief affair, that John has cancer, that all four feel ambivalent about their gay neighbors and that all four feel a great deal of love for their partners--but that love and intimacy is often confusing and frightening to them.

McNally has described “Lips Together, Teeth Apart” as a play about love “in the middle” of relationships. For him it belongs between the first flush of romance, so thrillingly captured in “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” and the tragic end of love that he darkly depicted in “The Lisbon Traviata.”

Certainly the dialogue in “Lips Together” is peppered with humdrum stuff about what everyone wants to eat, how they want it prepared, what they’re wearing and what they’re going to do with the kids (who were left with a baby-sitter), who insist, long-distance, on going on a hayride in the rain.

But shot through it all, as a reminder of the larger picture, is an unseen swimmer in the distance, who swims off into the ocean and never returns. That swimmer epitomizes giving up on life. He forces the couples to come to terms with the parts in themselves that fear death and the parts that would like to embrace it.

Will Roberson, who directed the Gaslamp’s fine production of “Frankie and Johnny,” directs again with great clarity. Under his vision, the four fine local performers interact with the subtle and richly layered complexities of a chamber music quartet.

Nolan gets the earthy nature of Sam, laboring to understand his hypersensitive artistic wife. Wride, while on the young side for Sally, captures the pain of a woman trying to make sense of the losses in her life. Kiley explodes in bursts of chipper brilliance as Chloe, the self-described “overbearing sister-in-law” who is nonetheless the kind of person who keeps everyone fed and everything humming. Bennett’s John is dark and complicated, but he deftly implies the fears under the pompous demeanor.

Amy Shock’s spare set design, exquisitely lit by Gregory Allen Hirsch, depicts the simple weather-beaten look of the beach house with simplicity and depth. Jeff Ladman’s sound design suggests the ocean nearby--the air machine riffling the windsock is a nice additional touch. Clare Henkel’s costumes are true to character, with Chloe’s colorful ensembles being a particular hoot.

It all adds up to one of the finest productions in the Gaslamp’s history--and one of the most challenging. For under the deceptively simple surface of “Lips Together, Teeth Apart,” McNally, by setting the play on the Fourth of July, is not only asking about the nature of relationships in America, he is questioning what it means to be American. The dead brother and his absent boyfriend, the invisible gay neighbors who throw American flags to the couples to wave during the fireworks--they are all part of an America that these four are uncomfortable about acknowledging.

This is the kind of play that makes you wonder what is going to happen next to these couples--and to the country.

“LIPS TOGETHER, TEETH APART”

By Terrence McNally. Director is Will Roberson. Set by Amy Shock. Lighting by Gregory Allen Hirsch. Sound by Jeff Ladman. Costumes by Clare Henkel. Choreography by Javier Velasco. With Kim Bennett, Kate Kiley, Paul L. Nolan and Shana Wride. At 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday with Sunday matinees at 2. Through Dec. 6. Tickets are $20-$25, depending on day of performance. At the Hahn Cosmopolitan Theatre, 444 4th Ave., San Diego. 234-9583.