“Roadside America,” the production currently making its worldwide debut at The Players’ Ring in Portsmouth, is the oddest uplifting play you’ll ever see, bar none.

Penned by first-time playwright Susan Morse, the story follows a very unhappily married couple that has moved into a small apartment in New Hampshire. Everyone in the neighborhood keeps to themselves, which suits wife Maggie (Sarah Kennedy) just fine. In fact, Maggie is content to rock in a wicker chair, wrapped in a blanket, and eat popsicle after popsicle. She gave up her job as a nurse to become a transcriptionist working from home, which she figures will be more practical when she and her husband have a baby.

“Roadside America,” the production currently making its worldwide debut at The Players’ Ring in Portsmouth, is the oddest uplifting play you’ll ever see, bar none.

Penned by first-time playwright Susan Morse, the story follows a very unhappily married couple that has moved into a small apartment in New Hampshire. Everyone in the neighborhood keeps to themselves, which suits wife Maggie (Sarah Kennedy) just fine. In fact, Maggie is content to rock in a wicker chair, wrapped in a blanket, and eat popsicle after popsicle. She gave up her job as a nurse to become a transcriptionist working from home, which she figures will be more practical when she and her husband have a baby.

Husband Joe (Scott Degan) seems much less enthusiastic about the prospect of having kids. He’d prefer that Maggie get a job and make friends in their new home, even going so far as to arrange a “girls’ night out” with some of the women he works with, a hilarious trio played by Fran McQuade, Katie Fitzpatrick and Debra Horning. A few chance words about Joe and the company slut/corporate climber fill in a whole lot of dots for Maggie.

For the next few days, Maggie walks about in an eerily calm fog and, ironically, does make a new friend—Grimaldi (the always delectable Richard Harris). Impossible not to like, he begins melting the igloo of popsicles Maggie has built between herself and the rest of the world. He’d like to melt them faster, but Maggie takes it one popsicle at a time.

The play’s real fireworks begin when the enchanting Kate Kosteva takes the stage as the mystical hippie, Grace McKay. Kosteva, a jewel of the stage for over a decade, takes this two-scene role and gives it such a rich history that you feel like you know this woman. What’s more, it is impossible not to adore her on the spot, both for her feisty personality and her obvious devotion to her nine-year-old daughter (Larissa Fogg).

With her baseball cap, glove and ever-present backpack, the girl insists on being called Sam. “Her middle name is Samantha,” Grace explains in her North Carolina lilt. “It’s a tomboy phase, I think.”

The landlord who owns all the cottages on the street doesn’t allow children, but Grace’s feathers aren’t ruffled in the slightest. She hasn’t told him about Sam and doesn’t think it’s any of his business.

Grace doesn’t seem to have any secrets, dropping the fact that she has diabetes into the conversation in the same way someone else might mention their favorite color. Maggie is awed by this casual display of courage and drawn to both Grace and the adorable Sam. She is charmed by the adventures her neighbors had while traveling from Baltimore, especially an attraction called Roadside America, an exhibit full of toy trains.

After a few days, the divorce papers finally arrive, but so many other things have come to Maggie’s attention that they barely register. There’s something funny about the hippie lady next door. Why is Sam always running out to do the errands? And why does Grace have to ask Maggie how much rent is and who she should take it to? Two steps—and one big inhale—give Maggie the answers she needs.

And then the mystery really starts to unravel.

Morse did made a few rookie mistakes in her debut. She wrote in characters who could have been described more efficiently and repeated certain bits of information so that the audience is sure to get it. But, by and large, she offers a cast full of characters we care deeply about, and we’re almost a little disappointed when the show ends.

Ralph Morang, no stranger to the director’s chair, mightily eased this bulky ship to port. In the hands of someone who understood it less, it could have been a play about, well, a bunch of people hanging out in the same place at the same time.

But Morang ensures that the audience wants this group to stick together.

Much credit also goes to the 10-year-old Fogg. Of all the characters onstage, it’s her wit that makes us laugh the loudest and her earnest sweetness that makes us scream, inside and out.

“Roadside America” runs at The Players’ Ring, 105 Marcy St., Portsmouth, on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 7 p.m. For reservations, call 603-436-8123.