John Cariani's Almost, Maine is cheese.

Now, there are plenty of different kinds of cheese. There is the plastic, homogenized, processed American crap, devoid of flavor, that barely deserves to exist. Then there's the excessively fancy, expensive, snooty cheese that spends way too much time trying to pretend that it wasn't accidentally invented when somebody left their milk out way too long and then decided to eat it anyway.

But there's also a middle ground, a comforting range of cheese, for sandwiches and Triscuits and melting over nachos. Cheese that is reassuring, relatively mild and basically awesome. And that's the kind of cheese you'll find in Gold From Straw's unpretentious and heartwarming sophomore production.

Maine tells something on the order of a dozen or so different love stories, all taking place on the same evening under the aurora borealis of northern Maine. The stories are told in a series of vignettes, rather than as an intertwined tale - though throwaway mentions and name-dropping make it clear everybody knows everybody in this not-quite-a-town.

What binds the tales together, while simultaneously letting them stand alone, is a hint of magic. Not one of the stories is realistic in the strictest sense. One girl literally carries the fragments of her broken heart in a paper bag. Another walks around the world in a single night to prove her love. Two men bring a whole new meaning to "falling" in love.

In place of realism, writer and cast do their best to substitute believability. And there are certainly some stretches, as actors push the inherent silliness of their scenes a little too hard and a little too far. But on the whole, each performer toes the line and finds the middle ground between ridiculous and heartfelt.

Almost, Maine is, as Aaron Schmookler tells us in his director's notes, a play of beginnings. After all, that's what any good romance is: the beginning of a longer love story. Each vignette aims to capture the spark, the magical flash at the moment of epiphany.

Of course, most of these moments are silly. But then, people are pretty silly. The lengths we'll go to find romance, only to have it fall directly into our laps, can be truly comical.

This show marks an about-face in tone from Gold From Straw's debut drama, Doubt. It shows Schmookler as a director who is not always out to make everyone uncomfortable, a tendency found in far too many now-defunct independent art-house theater companies.

There is a balance that can be struck between the think piece and the feel-good, the crowd-pleaser and the crowd-confuser, that a lot of "serious art"-focused theater producers miss. It can be found in well-known masterpieces of the field, but also in small, less-produced plays like those that Gold From Straw has chosen to produce so far. Hopefully they have a chance to continue this trend into 2011 and beyond.

Almost, Maine

Through Nov. 27, 8 p.m. Thursday–Saturday, 2 p.m. Nov. 13 and 27, $26
Theatre on the Square, 915 Broadway, Tacoma
253.591.5894