There is nothing quite as comfortable as sitting down to yet another dinner of your mother’s meatloaf or putting on an old T-shirt worn through with holes or hearing a favorite song for the two thousandth time.

That’s the the kind of feeling after seeing "Sea Marks," by Gardner McKay, running at Soulstice Theatre.

There is no mystery to the story; we’ve seen it before and it’s easy to see what’s coming at you, well before it gets there. There is no surprise in this play, nothing that makes you catch your breath and look at your neighbor in wonder.

Sometimes that meatloaf – or that T-shirt or that favorite song – is just a wonderful feeling, and that’s what this production delivers.

The story is of two people well into the years of their lives. Colm Primrose, played by David Ferrie, is an Irish fisherman, single, content, in love with his sea and lonely after his dog has died. Timothea Stiles, played by Julie Swenson, lives in Liverpool where she works a minor role at a publishing house, possessing a proper English accent to belie her Welsh upbringing and feeling equally lonely.

Colm saw her at a wedding and was struck. On a hope and a prayer, he writes her a letter, formal and stiff, but full of a hidden longing. She is surprised at the letter and doesn’t recall meeting him but writes back anyhow.

What follows is an exchange of letters, delivered by both actors stuck in their separate places. They grow ever increasingly familiar, almost intimate. He tells her of his sea; she tells him of the letters he writes, sharing almost nothing of her life.

It’s clear from the get go that they are going to meet and fall in love, and they do.

She first visits his hamlet for a one-day wedding stop and then invites him to come to Liverpool for a visit. The attraction for both is clear, and it’s only a matter of time that the year and half of letter writing carries us into a love nest.

His arrival is greeted by a change into a nightgown and a perch on the bed as Timothea invites him to join her.

"For the love of God," he shouts at her. "I’m a virgin man, and there’s no use pretending any different because soon enough you’ll know."

The lights go out, and the deed is done.

Timothea is especially in love, not just with Colm, but with the words he wrote in his letters. They are her poetry, and she creates a gift for him of his words in book form. It’s called "Sea Sonnets," and he doesn’t quite know what to make of it all.

Again, the path to where this relationship is headed is unsullied by any branch.

He is pulled to his home by the power and sustenance of his sea. She is locked into her life and is committed to her life of ambition to be almost anything except the Welsh farm girl she was.

He eventually caves in to the sea and she, like a woman deeply in love, sends him on his way.

Like any good Irishman, Colm finds that deep sorrow has beaten a path to his door and favors the audience with a monologue of moodiness that is some of the best work I’ve ever seen Ferrie do.

She wants more for him; he wants more of his home.

That is nothing quite so romantic as romance in the live theater, and Ferrie and Swenson have a romantic charisma that sparkles.

Under the directorial debut of actor David Sapiro, they achieve one of the most difficult things to do in the theater: They make us believe they are real people, honest and flawed and full of the kind of oddities that mark each of us. Sapiro wisely lets these two play with each other as middle-aged lovers might actually do. They are demanding partners and forgiving partners. Just like real life.

Ferrie is marvelous as the old man of this sea. He has the Irish gifts of wit, humor and the curses of too much alcohol and the fabled Gaelic stubbornness. A seasoned actor, Ferries understands better than almost anybody how important pace is to a speech. He never misses a step with his two loves.

Swenson, the talented artistic director at Renaissance Theaterworks, is stunning as Timothea. She has an ability to switch from a glamorous model-type to a happy-in-spite-of-it-all woman trying to make peace with her place in the world.

These are two actors each at the top of their game, and the audience is the beneficiary.

"Sea Marks" continues through March 26, and information on tickets and showtimes is available here.

Production Credits: Director, David Sapiro; Producer, Mary Ellen O’Donnell; Sound Designer, Therese Goode; Lighting Designer, Alan Piotrowicz; Stage Manager Ashley Oakley; Set Design, David Ferrie and David Sapiro.