"Almost" is a precarious place to live, both geographically and emotionally. It can mean, "I give up" or "Thank God I missed it" just as easily as it can mean, "I'm nearly there" or "Look what I found." On its shifting terrain, playwright John Cariani weaves nine very brief but interrelated stories of such charm that you almost - there's that word again - overlook how minimal they are, or how repetitious they can be. Cariani's play, "Almost, Maine," now at Geva Theatre Center, takes advantage of the blue-white light of a northern New England night to cast warmth in a desperately cold place - what this self-identified "slightly surreal" play calls a "small town in northern Maine that doesn't quite exist." The play's other cold place is the damaged heart, eventually made literal with wonderful comic effect in the second-act scene entitled, "Getting It Back."

With such good writing, acting, and directing throughout, maybe you decide that for the moment nothing matters more than these slender variations on a theme; you play along for the satisfaction they offer to those susceptible to Cariani's enticingly hopeful ironies. Eventually, the smallest surprises become disarming because they have the power to change wounded or barren lives dramatically. For this sort of thing to work, the stories have to trade in the ordinary - a young man learns that his former lover is getting married tomorrow, a young woman needs to break off an affair, and, in the connected prologue, interlogue, and epilogue, a couple courts hesitantly for much too long. In each case, something insignificant magically shifts the ground under their feet - a misspelled name on a tattoo, a tiny bag that supposedly contains "all the love I gave you," and a snowball that inspires acts of mutual persistence. For the reader, this may confuse rather than clarify, but it's crucial not to give too much away whenever you encounter Magic Realism. If you haven't seen "Almost, Maine," you need to be surprised, too.

Essential to the sketches' effect is the way they view sadness with sympathy and find comedy in confusion. Because the characters are likeable as well as a little foolish, laughter wards off the sentimentality that would undo their slender stories. Cariani is a deft writer whose humor rises from his quick grasp of human nature (as long as you don't dig too deeply), his keen ear for the way people talk (but without the irritating din of "like," "like," "like") and his gift for making everyday talk funny. A former actor, he writes dialogue that feels made for acting, and the ensemble of two young women and two young men eagerly embraces the play's 20 different characters. One of the best examples is the exuberant undressing of a couple of snowmobilers who finally come in out of the cold (in more ways than one). It is the kind of comic excess that suits Magic Realism well - until the scene flops at the end by making the suggestive (and already understood) merely literal.

Despite their appeal, some scenes are much better than others. The weakest are those in the second act when Cariani's outlook turns darker. In one, a young woman takes advantage of a misplaced shoe's surprising return to end her marriage, and in the other, a desperate young women returns to her hometown in search of her former lover but doesn't recognize him. The first scene feels mechanical and the second far-fetched.

All four actors are fine, but David Mason and Patrick Noonan are especially good at delineating character quickly without sacrificing their feel for comedy both nuanced and broad. At the same time, Skip Greer's direction focuses beautifully on the smallest details - the spread of a hand, the turn and lift of a foot, the scrunching down of the shoulders - to give each character its own identity. Only once does he lose command: in a scene where two men discover their affection for one another and begin to fall ecstatically, their tumbling to the ground goes on long after it stops being funny.

Dipu Gupta's simple, snow-covered set of benches and cutouts of evergreens provides nothing too permanent for a make-believe place, and somehow Kendall Smith's lighting conveys a northern Maine winter with a trace of warmth. Pamela Scofield's costumes rightly look as if they come from an especially scruffy L.L. Bean catalogue.

Did you happen to notice that just as "Almost, Maine" was about to open, Rochester awoke from a long cold snap to something warmer and brighter? It appears that Geva's artistic director Mark Cuddy suspected something the rest of us didn't: that John Cariani's play is a gift of diversion at a time of year when diversion may be almost the best gift of all.

"Almost, Maine"

Through February 7

Geva Theatre Center, 75 Woodbury Blvd.

$22-$59 | 232-4382, gevatheatre.org