Donald Margulies is a smart writer, adept at creating shaded characters that are neither right nor wrong, just perfectly able to rub each other the wrong way to the enjoyment of an audience. We see it in his brilliant Dinner with Friends, which Actors Theatre did a great job of presenting three seasons ago, and his earlier script that AT is mounting, Sight Unseen. While infused with Jewish themes, as many of his scripts are, it is a play that asks many universal questions and even takes a stab at answering one or two of them. It is a collage of moments, now and from the past, in which successful painter Jonathan Waxman (Nicolas Glaeser) loses and gains his innocence and artistic clarity. Director Matthew Wiener has collected some familiar faces to fill the roles of Jonathan’s former paramour and muse Patricia (Maria Amorocho), her staid and markedly older British archeologist hubby Nick (Ben Tyler) and Grete, (Natalie Messersmith) an icy and slightly suspicious German interviewer. Wiener has his generally superb cast maneuver through the minefields of contemporary art, sexual politics, and the effect of history on the present and step on such explosives as the worthiness of art, the chilling effect of sex, and anti-Semitism.

Wiener is always at his best when he’s placing verbal sparring matches into three-dimensional spaces, and Margulies gives him plenty to work with here. He is unafraid of simultaneous line delivery, of longish pauses, and deadpan delivery to give long sections of charged dialogue freshness and truth. He also uses his stage as a chessboard, placing his characters at angles and distances that reflect and enhance the battles in which they are embroiled. He elicits some pretty amazing emotional depths from his actors, too, but he’s always done well at this.

This is the best performance I’ve seen from Glaeser, returning from New York City for a visit to remind us of what we lost. Though it isn’t a stretch from a lot of the work he’s done, and it may seem pretty easy for a native New Yorker to portray a New York Jewish painter, Glaeser goes a lot further into Waxman. His easygoing ways seamlessly slide into the underlying guilt that Jonathan feels about success, betrayal, and his lost heritage. This is a tricky performance to create; we empathize with Glaeser’s Jonathan, even if we don’t exactly like him. Amorocho is not quite as strong as Glaeser. She is always in the moment, but it’s hard to believe her as the dilettante-turned-expatriate Patricia. Amorocho has a series of repetitive hand and arm motions that become visual hiccups which draw attention away from the more cerebral moments. While she is quite engaging and emotionally expressive, Amorocho doesn’t quite pull off being a siren that can draw two men into life-changing relationships with her. Still, she brings across Patricia’s longing and regret.

Tyler’s Nick is a gruff creation that you can’t help but love and hate simultaneously. Though his nondescript British accent is a pale recreation, Tyler embodies all of Nick’s guarded levels and emotional outbursts. Messersmith takes time to slide into her character’s sleek, tightly packed, and sharply painted hide, but once she begins sparring with Glaeser, she proves Grete to be a worthy opponent.

Jeff Thomson’s sharply raked set creates three distinctive playing spaces for the three separate times being chronicled, and his nice use of enormous blank canvases and the ever-present collage of Waxman history hovering behind are a visual comment on the action. Paul A. Black’s lighting captures mood but much too often makes itself known, especially during the scripts more dramatic moments. Connie Furr’s costumes are well thought out reflections of character and time. David Temby’s sound design sets mood effectively.

Actors Theatre ends the season on a high note after a tumultuous time when its very survival seemed to be in doubt. See this show. Support this theatre. A vibrant theatre community needs healthy companies that are willing to mount more than just dusty classics and rusty warhorses. Actors Theatre has proven time and again the most professional source for experimental thinking and successful risk-taking.