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Yet another bizarre title to add to off-Broadway's swelling roster of openings this spring. But while "Dusk Rings A Bell" has that ring of esoteric ambiguity, it is in fact a beautifully tender love story blessed with a fine production featuring two exquisite performances.

We first meet Molly, a bright and articulate TV news executive, newly divorced, yet wistfully upbeat. She is 39 years old and on this day, traveling to an old beach house where she vacationed with her parents many years earlier. She’s anxious to recover a hidden note which she wrote to herself at the age of 14. The plan all along was to retrieve it after 25 years. She had been a stutterer as a child and the note was intended as a forced cure. It apparently worked as the stuttering did stop and she became, as she describes herself, an expert communicator.

That summer of '85 was fateful for another reason. She met Ray, a young man slightly older, who gave her her first romantic kiss at dusk on the beach. Their brief encounter stuck with her through all the years since; and returning to the house, they happen to reconnect.

Playwright Stephen Belber delivers with poetic sensitivity and insight a work that could so easily have turned cliché. His characters, as written and performed, resonate with a depth of humanity that make this two hander utterly engrossing.

Kate Walsh, best known for her work on television’s "Grey’s Anatomy" and "Private Practice" is a gifted stage actress. She delivers a stunningly nuanced portrait of a woman who comes to realize that some things like the notion of emotion defy communication.

And the chemistry with co-star Paul Sparks does indeed spark an added dimension of intrigue. Ray’s something of a mystery and Sparks' wonderfully low-keyed natural performance proves yet again why he’s one of New York's most brilliant and underrated actors.

Director Sam Gold fills the Atlantic Theatre’s deceptively bare Stage 2 with dramatic riches: a keenly perceptive production of an eloquent beachfront romance, and actors who movingly evoke the ebb and flow of love lost and found.