By PETER SANTILLI
Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- Playwright Lee Blessing chose an unusual approach to storytelling in his cryptic, interpretive drama "A Body of Water."

Rather than gradually reveal the details of his characters' history and present disposition, he instead cloaks them in a veil of ambiguity, refusing to disclose much at all about them.

In the play's opening scene, a man (Michael Cristofer) and a woman (Christine Lahti) wake up in bed together with absolutely no recollection of who or where they are. The frantically unsettled duo wallow in wild, fruitless speculation until a mysterious third character (Laura Odeh) emerges to help them - and us - put the pieces together. But the pieces come slowly.

Blessing further obfuscates the relationship of his characters by leading us down trails of discovery that turn out to be false, compromising the trust of anyone who might be interested to learn more about the psyches at work in his three-person play, which opened Tuesday at off-Broadway's 59E59 Theatres.

This cat-and-mouse game at times becomes nearly as frustrating for the audience as it appears to be for the memory-challenged characters. But Blessing somehow uses the uncertainty to build suspense and draw us in. He also uses it to pose questions without imposing answers. With so much left open to interpretation, this experimental piece resounds long after it ends, an indicator of worthwhile theater.

The play, first produced in 2005 at Minneapolis' Guthrie Theatre, won the Steinberg New Play Award, an honor reserved for new works produced outside of New York. The current Playwrights Horizons production, on display through Nov. 16, marks the show's New York premier.

Under the direction of Maria Mileaf, the present incarnation of "A Body of Water" benefits from engaging performances by a capable cast. Lahti, an Emmy winner for her work on television's "Chicago Hope," and Cristofer, a playwright whose works include the 1977 Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Shadow Box," display believable vulnerability and exasperation, two conditions that pervade the one-act play.

Lahti and Cristofer proved to be fast studies after replacing the originally announced stars, Margaret Colin and David Rasche, who left the production shortly before it opened because of other engagements.

The title comes from the play's setting, a house on a what we're told is a beautifully forested hill surrounded on all sides by a seemingly continuous body of water. Unfortunately, the painted set, though ambitious in scale, is a bit of a disappointment. The towering backdrop is realistically and competently rendered, but doesn't seize an obvious opportunity to add distinction to the production and probably fails to achieve whatever effect Blessing might have had in mind.

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