‘Lonely Planet’ is a powerful play about finding your way in a time of crisis, without a map

STEPHANIE GAMBA

Dustin Ballard, above, and John Keller co-star in “Lonely Planet” at Luna Stage in West Orange.

Steven Dietz’s “Lonely Planet,” the deeply moving two-character play that is currently being presented by Luna Stage in West Orange, is set in a map store. And at one point in it, the store’s owner, Jody, tells us, in a soliloquy, what he likes about maps. “They’ve been called ‘surrogates of space,’ ” he says. “They make order and reduce our reliance on hypotheses. They are a picture of what’s known.”

In a different monologue, later, Jody goes even further, saying “a mapmaker takes a messy, round world and places it neat and flat, on a wall in front of you.”

STEPHANIE GAMBA

Dustin Ballard in “Lonely Planet.”

The program gives us a setting (“a small map store on the oldest street in an American city”) but not the time when the action takes place. But “Lonely Planet” — directed here by Melissa Firlit, and with scenic designer Lucas Pinner building an impressively realistic map store — was first produced in 1993. And it becomes clear, pretty quickly, that living under the specter of AIDS is one of its big themes.

Jody, played here by John Keller, is gay, as is the play’s other character, Carl (Dustin Ballard), though their relationship is platonic. Carl is a friend who spends so much time in the store that he becomes like family. Keller and Ballard convey their deep bond effectively.

Carl also connects Jody to the outside world, in a way. Jody’s strategy, in the face of AIDS, has been to retreat: He rarely leaves the store anymore. But the eccentric, talkative and occasionally annoying Carl — the low-key Jody jokes that he’s “like the little brother I never wanted to have” — comes and goes, and tells Jody about all his different jobs. Depending on what day it is, he may be an art restorer in a museum, or work on windows at an auto shop, or be a tabloid newspaper reporter.

He can’t really be all those things, of course. Is any of it true, or is he just making it all up?

Another mystery: One day, at the start of the play, a chair shows up in the store. Then there are more. Eventually — even though Jody describes himself as “perpetually fighting against clutter” — there are so many that they remain piled on top of each other, and in some cases even hang from the ceiling.

It turns out that Carl is bringing them to the store. But why is he doing that, and what does it all mean?

STEPHANIE GAMBA

John Keller in “Lonely Planet.”

This is a sneakily profound play. By that, I mean that the writing may seem, at first, to be a bit random, and fanciful. The “Seinfeld” strategy of being a “show about nothing” — and, hey, “Seinfeld” was more or less at its peak in 1993 — may seem to apply.

In one scene, for instance, Jody gets a haircut from Carl. In another, Carl vents about how boring everyone in the world has become (“How did this happen? When did this happen? At some imperceptible moment everybody became absolutely shuffle-your-feet, stare-out-the-window boring.”).

The two men have an imaginary sword fight while making up faux-Shakespearean banter (“The gods laugh at thy piteous, pixie-ish posturing!”). And Jody tells Carl his dreams, which are all different, but similar: He is always mistaken for someone else, and faced with a big task that he doesn’t know how to accomplish.

At one point, Jody suddenly launches into a story about how he first got interested in maps. At various times, Carl keeps telling Jody about more (possibly fictional) jobs he has taken on, and keeps bringing a rapidly escalating number of chairs to the store, without explaining why.

But everything coalesces in the second of the play’s two acts, when Jody needs to (finally) venture out of the store, to get an AIDS test. The symbolic meaning of everything that has come before comes into sharp focus, and we see what Dietz is really up to. He provides a lot of amusing moments along the way, but his ending may haunt you for a long time.

Luna Stage in West Orange will present “Lonely Planet” through Dec. 8. Visit lunastage.org.