MARSHALL, Mich.–When Matt Friedman takes the stage in Great Escape Stage Company’s production of Lanford Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning Talley’s Folly, he breaks the fourth wall and tells the audience that the play they are about to see is “a waltz, a no-holds-barred romantic story.” And that it will last exactly 97 minutes with no intermission.

In this role, Randy Lake is excellent. He’s a natural as a dramatic orator; he pulls in the audience. One could see him as an outstanding Stage Manager in Our Town. However, when he shifts into the role of dance partner in the waltz, he leads a little too much, never quite exposing the emotional vulnerability necessary for this love story to transcend sentimentality.

It’s Independence Day, 1944, and Friedman, a Jewish accountant, travels from St. Louis to Lebanon, Mo., to win the love of Sally Talley, a local gal with whom he had a fling the summer before. On the face of it, they couldn’t be any different. She’s Midwestern, which is as good as Southern to this Eastern European immigrant cum East Coast Jew. She’s from a wealthy conservative Christian family for whom Friedman “is more dangerous than Roosevelt himself.” She’s also 11 years his junior, lovely to look at, and at least a head taller than him. He’s approaching rotund and past 40.

They’re an odd match in the physical, material world, and Randy Lake and Karen York embody this awkwardness beautifully. You’d never put these two together. And this makes their attraction all the more compelling. For theirs is a union of spirit and intellect; two wounded souls who fight and suffer for their ideals and don’t quite fit in their respective worlds amid the shared terrible context of the World Wars.

At its essence, this is a play about two people who, though terrified to be vulnerable after surviving the traumas of their past, are faced with an opportunity to heal themselves through love. All in 97 minutes flat.

It’s quite a project. And one that almost succeeds.

All eyes are on the two actors’ extended scene practically from start to finish, so their dance, their chemistry, their timing, their repartee must be on the money at every moment. Lake takes command, almost to a fault, though that may be because York forgets the steps now and again. She looks the part, though her accent is more Alabama than Missouri. Her voice can be shrill and squawky, and, at times, she delivers her lines a half beat too late in response to Lake. He, in turn, is highly responsive and in command, even in a scene in which he makes a fool of himself while donning, inexplicably, ice skates (no chance the river in south central Missouri ever freezes). More nuance, less largesse, is required in this tight little play in such an intimate space. Ultimately, these missteps create emotional expressions that not only don’t ring true, but they almost don’t make sense.

The script works in their favor, though, so what turns out to read as sentimental rather than authentic emotion, doesn’t hinder one’s understanding of the narrative or compassion for these two.

And technically, this show is a delight. Lake, in addition to playing a lead role and being Artistic Director of the theatre, designed a beautiful set, that, with Graham Rowe-Bultinck’s warm lights, creates a convincing summer setting and place of retreat as they rekindle the past. The “genuine Victorian folly, a boathouse” complete with lattice work and bric a brac is dressed with appropriate greenery and fishing gear; and the multileveled deck downstage summons the sense of being on water as does the lulling sounds of frog and cricket chirps.

There are so many of the right elements here it’s possible, in time, this show will grow into its potential, and the waltz will be as beautiful as intended–the romance transcendent of sentimentality.