In Bathsheba Doran's elliptical comedy-drama Kin, the title becomes shorthand for the people we save and those who redeem us. Sean (Grinnell Morris) is a personal trainer and Irish émigré; Anna (Melissa Collins) is a Columbia University adjunct who's just completed her first book, a bone-dry exegesis of Keatsian punctuation. We can see where this is going, but their onstage meet-cute gets postponed; instead we chart the couple's romantic progress via separate encounters with their respective tribes, whose stories are equally compelling. There's Sean's mother, Linda (Rhonda Lord), a boozy agoraphobe since an assault decades ago derailed her life; her brother and Sean's surrogate father, Max (a delightful John Combs); Anna's father (David Hunt Stafford), a retired colonel nursing a broken heart since the death of Anna's mother, or so she believes; and best of all Helena (Elizabeth Lande), a thwarted actress whose quirky humor belies her profound loneliness. Collins offers a rich turn as the layered Anna, who aches for connection even as she pushes others away, but it's Lande who steals the show.Director Jules Aaron's even hand delivers both humor and sensitivity, while Jeff Rack's lovely minimalist, modular set allows actors to dwell onstage, lingering in each other's scenes like emotional subtext.

Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Starts: Sept. 26. Continues through Oct. 27, 2013

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