Going to see a play at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts is a way to escape the doldrums of life — each and every performance has its own energy. The latest at the Schwartz, Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music is no different. The play, penned by acclaimed playwright Lee Blessing and directed by Schwartz Center Artistic Director David Feldshuh, is a unique and hilarious comedy about ordinary people living ordinary lives in Houston, Texas, set at a bar called Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music.

When the lights go on, a rugged-looking man with a horseshoe mustache is waist-deep in his beater pickup truck, fiddling with this and that, trying to get its starter working. Picking off nuts and banging away with a wrench, he swears and kicks his truck, which releases sand onto the stage. Finally, he threatens it, saying “I once saw a man eat a truck … took him eleven years, but he did it. Food for thought.” This man, Jim Stools (played by Michael Kaplan), is the owner of the Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music bar, and soon one of his best customers, the dull Roy Manual (Aaron Sprecher) comes out to ask Jim’s advice on love. Roy, the local pretty-boy who looks the typical cowboy with a red plaid shirt tucked into blue jeans tucked into cowboy boots, has fallen in love with a girl who probably doesn’t even know his name.

The first act flies by as we listen to Roy’s love-sick woes, his inability to find “true love” and Jim’s airy monologues about how he met his woman, Eve Wilfong. Jim describes how he met and fell in love with Eve at Texas International Airport, starting a conversation with her after their luggage tangled together in the x-ray machine. He laments how he’ll never be rid of the her, and how much she transformed him from the baddest biker in town to a broken man more likely to watch something along the lines of John and Kate Plus Eight than take his (now deceased) Harley for a spin. Blessing’s writing talent is evident as we discover how human and how delightfully wacky Jim and Roy are — these are the types of people that you might meet on a long train ride or at the diner next to the McDonalds facing the Burger King across the street.

The set of the first scene is spare; the props include Jim’s red and blue pickup truck, a toolbox, a tarp, a metal barrel and a few beers. The truck is an especially dynamic prop. Without it, many of the scenes of the first act could not exist. The truck symbolizes sacrifice, as it is Jim’s replacement for his Harley, but it also represents Jim’s means of escape, a break from the bar, work, his girlfriend and Texas. That the truck is broken means something but not everything to Jim. He can come out and dive under it whenever he needs to, fleeing into his own mind.

The second act stars the women. Eve (Lisa Frank) and her 20 year-old niece Catherine (Julie Reed), an outsider, a northerner and a former novice nun who is on extended leave from her convent, are on the bar’s roof. The beautiful Catherine looks out of place and acts awkwardly (just wait until you hear her stories about life in the convent), and like Roy, is keen on love — especially when it represents an ordinary life. Catherine asks Eve for advice about getting on top of the world and her gregarious aunt is more than willing to share her own past, including her falling in with Jim and escaping from her former man, a lethally dull Latvian professor.

Adding to the eccentric nature and the comedy of the play is Jay Bob (Joey Triska), Eve’s son from her previous relationship, who is visiting for the summer. Jay Bob is 20, like Catherine, but has the opposite temperament. His character seems to have done nothing but piss off Jim since coming to Houston, and is different from the other characters his age: He does not seem to want anything in particular — you could say that he seems like the most well-grounded young adult of the bunch. Eventually, all five of the characters make it onto the roof where their personalities collide. We watch as Roy attempts to court Catherine and as Jim attacks Jay Bob, as all the while Eve tries to keep her son under control while nurturing Catherine and telling off Roy.

Once again, Blessing’s virtuosity is visible, because we can simultaneously laugh at the eccentricities of each fully-formed characters while asking ourselves: how come these guys are so much like me? Can I picture myself as Catherine or Roy? Or: Yep, Jim would do that. Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music is about the wacky in all of us, the uniqueness of our lives, the people we could meet; hell, Blessing gives us a way to take life by the horns, by watching it unfold. Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music is an uplifting comedy that features outstanding actors, ones who seem to be made for their roles, even though they many of them have been on the Schwartz center stage before. Come and see, laugh with Nice People (running through Nov. 1) — you couldn’t be disappointed.

Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music plays at the Schwartz Center from Oct. 21-25 and 28-31 at 7:30 p.m. Matinees are offered on Oct. 25 and 31 and Nov. 1. A post-show discussion with the actors and designers will be held Oct. 29. Tickets for Nice People Dancing to Good Country Music are $8 (students/seniors) and $10 (general) in advance.