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PROVIDENCE - Everyone has a past relationship they wonder about occasionally, maybe one they'd like to revisit for a "do-over."

Elena and Reed, a middle-aged couple who lived in an open relationship during college in the 1970s and bump into each other 25 years later when a snowstorm grounds their planes in a Midwestern airport, get that chance in "Shooting Star," a richly developed two-person play on stage now at Trinity Repertory Company.

This is an amazing play, one that evokes wistfulness, stirs memories each of us carry deep in our hearts, and reminds us that the decisions of youth are some we will always rethink, replay in our minds, and even regret.

In just 90 minutes, playwright Steven Dietz artfully walks the audience through the intricacies, pains, joys, fears, jealousies and hopes of a romantic relationship. He peels away dozens of layers, exposing nerves that are raw, love that is tender. His dialogue is rich, his moral universal.

Reed steps onto the sparse set first, dragging his suitcase over to a stand of metal chairs in an airport waiting area, listening to the drone of announcements about flight delays and the snowstorm. Clad in a blue pinstripe suit, he's the everyman of the business world, on his way to another ho-hum sales pitch in a far-away city. Elena bustles in moments later, an aging hippy in a patchwork skirt, lugging an assortment of bags, including one containing her yoga mat, and a 6-foot long rain stick she will use in some new-age style cleansing ceremony when she arrives in Boston.

The dialogue begins between each character and the audience, which plays the all-important third member of the cast. When they see each other in the airport, they react very differently, sharing their hopes and insecurities with the audience. Reed would like to avoid his ex-girlfriend; he believes he has successfully advanced through life, and left his wilder days behind. She, he notes wryly, has not.

"Do you really want to keep bumping into people you are done with?" he asks the audience.

Elena, on the other hand, reaches for hair gel in one of her bags, scrunching it into her curly hair, and stuffing tissues into her bra while she waits for Reed to notice her. She wants to talk to him, but only if he initiates.

The initial contact is awkward. In the 25 years since Reed left their apartment never to return, the two have experienced other relationships, suffered other hurts, and have emerged still plagued by the fear of opening old wounds. Reed has married, although that is failing, and he is trying to rebuild his relationship with his daughter. Elena has never married, although she gave a daughter up for adoption.

Their conversation quickly turns playful, as Elena digs at Reed for his Republican tendencies despite all the hours of National Public Radio she subjected him to.

"You're like a businessman in a box - just add water and stir," she teases, adding that he had been her guilty pleasure. "Bedding a Republican - kinky!"

As the snowstorm closes the airport overnight and the reunion is extended, it seems that Reed and Elena might rekindle their romance. They talk tenderly about the abortion Elena had when they were a couple, about the feelings of jealousy sparked by their swinger lifestyle, which ultimately broke their relationship. But, with Reed separated, this might be the time for a second chance.

Playwright Dietz is a wonderful student of the human psyche and the nature of men and women. At one point, he has Elena note that, "I'm a woman of a certain age and women of a certain age can explain away anything, especially to herself!" It is comments like this that draw the audience into a kinship with Elena and Reed, an intimacy that is rarely possible in the theatre.

Director Fred Sullivan has a keen eye for staging "Shooting Star." He casts Nance Williamson as Elena and Kurt Rhoads as Reed, generating a chemistry that is vital and dramatic. Each are magnificent. Williamson seems zany and full of life, and artfully lends a pain to Elena that is palpable. Her Elena is someone we'd want to befriend, and once the layers of her life are peeled back, what's revealed is a hollowness in her heart each of us can understand.

Rhoads offers the perfect male dichotomy to Reed. He is hog-tied by the stereotypical duty and responsibility heaped onto men, and somewhat wistful for his youth. But Rhoads infuses rich color into his portrayal of Reed's pain over his difficult relationship with his daughter, and seems genuinely torn for a bit over a youthful desire to be with the one who got away.

"Shooting Star" is a good exercise in revisiting memories and effectively tucking them away again. It's a wonderful piece of theatre. It remains on stage at Trinity through Nov. 22. For tickets, call the Trinity box office at 401-351-4242 or go to www.trinityrep.com.