One Friday night in the little far-north town of Almost, Maine, Ginette tells Pete she loves him and feels close to him. The two are sitting outdoors on a bench in the middle of winter. They are bundled in winter clothing. Pete reaches down and grabs a handful of snow. “You’re really actually about as far away from me as you can possibly be,” Pete corrects. Pointing to two spots on a snowball he has formed, he explains: “If I’m here, and you’re here, then – ” He moves his finger around the entire circumference of the snowball. She follows: The whole world separates the two of them. When Ginette moves farther away from Pete on the bench, he says: “Now … you’re closer.” Ginette gets up and walks away. Is she leaving him or closing the distance?

That’s the way it is in Almost. Logic is turned backward and the love is unpredictable. Haven’t heard of the place?

Playwright John Cariani doesn’t use the word fictional to describe the northeast-corner setting of his romantic comedy “Almost, Maine,” which Penobscot Theatre Company opens Friday at the Bangor Opera House. It’s somewhere west of Caribou, west of Portage, not far from Presque Isle. Right in the heart of Aroostook County. Up there. Fictional, yes. But Cariani sees it more as “mythical.”

And he should know. Cariani grew up in Presque Isle, where the wide-open spaces and small-town life inspired him to see the world through unspoiled eyes. He calls his approach magical realism, a literary mode of combining the regular with the supernatural. It’s no wonder that the writer is drawn to the fiction of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and movies such as “Like Water for Chocolate” and “Crash,” all of which employ magic in some way.

He is also drawn back to the lessons he learned in Maine.

“We used to go outside all the time because whenever you were sad or had problems, there were hills you’d go to and sit with your friend and talk,” said Cariani, who is 38 and lives near Harlem in Manhattan. “There’s something about having all the time and all the space in the world to make you believe that things would get fixed. The sky is more than everywhere. That sticks with you.”

That big Maine sky stuck with Cariani long enough to be the central visual image of the play. Production sets, including Lex Liang’s massive reproduction of a map of Maine for the PTC production, make use of astronomical beauty. Under that kind of vastness, of course, anything is possible, a belief that has propelled Cariani in his own work.

For the last 10 years, he has lived in New York City as an actor – he won an Outer Critics Circle Award and was nominated for a Tony in 2004 for his featured performance in the Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof” – but more recently has garnered attention as a writer. “Almost, Maine” premiered at Portland Stage Company in 2004, and then moved to New York City, where it had a two-month run Off-Broadway at the Daryl Roth Theatre. His newest work, “cul-de-sac,” for which he is writer and an actor in the ensemble cast, began an Off-Broadway run last week. It is not set in Maine.

In Portland, “Almost” broke box office records for ticket sales, said PSC artist director Anita Stewart. An expert cast who had been with the piece since its first version, as well as the heart of the play’s themes of love, community life and rural personalities, contributed to the triumph, she added.

“It’s quirky and yet there are very real people in it,” said Stewart, who hopes to work with Cariani on future plays. “The beauty of it is, yes, it’s Maine, but it could be any small town in the United States.”

Larry Nathanson, an actor who performed in the original staged reading of the play in 2002 and at PSC, described the Portland experience as “a love affair between the play and the audience.”

“What I found exciting,” said Nathanson, who lives in New York City, “is that the characters were expressing universal stuff in a completely local or colloquial way. It was fun to act [as] people who weren’t from the city. It also felt important for these people to have a story, to be showing stories that weren’t just from the city.”

When he wrote the 11 vignettes that make up “Almost, Maine,” Cariani was committed to representing people beyond the urban focus of much contemporary theater. “All the plays I saw were about New York, New Yorkers and urban settings,” he said. “I realize theater is a New York thing. But I remember growing up reading literature about wide open spaces. So I started writing stories I wanted to be in.”

At auditions, he presented his own ghost-written monologues. Directors liked them, and he found himself creating more and more short pieces about small-town life.

“Almost, Maine” has been compared to Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” and works by David Mamet. One actor in the current Penobscot Theatre Company production called it “clean Mamet.” You won’t hear the f-word in this play.

Instead, you’ll meet two characters who literally fall – as in onto the floor – in love with each other, a woman whose heart is so broken you can hear it clatter, and two snowmobilers whose layers of winter woolies can’t stop them from finding physical closeness.

“There’s love in this play,” said Scott R.C. Levy, producing artistic director at PTC and director for this production. “There’s no love in Mamet.” Levy, who recently made his first trip to Aroostook County, quickly added: “How great to have a play about here. I love that it’s the smallest play we’ve done all season. This is a fringe play. It’s a very intimate piece. And we’re working on a magical production, one with glitter and twinkle dust on the set.”

As with the big Almost sky filled with stars, the creative team at PTC feels a responsibility to work Cariani’s magic without being quaint or saccharine, a pitfall, some believed, of the New York production. This is not “On Golden Pond” after all.

“These people are not the coast,” said Cariani, whose script cautions against using stereotypical Maine accents. “Do not think Down East. Do not think ‘ayuh.’ Do not think lobstermen, fishermen or anything like that. Think the woods.”

Because of his involvement in his new play in New York, Cariani will be in town for only one day – today – to see a dress rehearsal at PTC, the closest professional theater to the actual location of the mythical town of Almost.

For those involved in the play and – they hope – for the audience, the mythic comes very close to being the most real.

“I’m really proud to be doing this in Maine,” said actor Caroline Price, a New York-based actor whose family moved to Cape Elizabeth when she was a young girl. “I like that it’s honest, this it’s very simple. I feel like there is a lot of respect on John’s part for the people in the play.”

As for Pete and Ginette, whose love story opens the play, love conquers the world. Well, Almost.

Penobscot Theatre Company will present “Almost, Maine” April 26-May 7 at the Bangor Opera House on Main Street. Previews are April 26 and 27. The show opens April 28. An additional performance will take place May 12. For tickets, call 942-3333 or visit www.penobscottheatre.org. Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.

‘Almost, Maine’: The State Tour

After its run at the Bangor Opera House, “Almost, Maine” hits the road. Additional performances will take place at 7 p.m. at the following locations:

Thursday, May 11, Eastport Arts Center

Friday, May 12, Bangor Opera House

Saturday, May 13, Camden Opera House

Sunday, May 14, Stonington Opera House

Wednesday, May 17, Houlton High School

Friday, May 19, Caribou Performing Arts Center