Libby is having a bad day. She’s hosting a dinner party and, in the course of preparing the food, tries to open a jar with her teeth. Out pops the cap on her front tooth. She spends the rest of the evening with her index finger attached to her upper lip to hide her disfigurement. God forbid she tell — or show — anyone about the gap in her life.

The situation is one of many absurdly recognizable scenes from “Blue Window,” the Craig Lucas play that opened last weekend at Penobscot Theatre. An 80-minute slice of life about a group of Manhattan apartment dwellers who come together for a Sunday meal and ingest more than just a little too much food and drink, “Blue Window” puzzles over the nature of individual passions, intimate connections and the depths of human longing. It’s a compelling play, one that makes you think about the trivia in life while setting you up for a punch bowl of tasty existential angst.

The blue window, by the way, becomes a hefty metaphor for the possibilities of connection. A window, after all, can be open, closed, curtained, broken and seen through — as might be said of the seven urban party goers in this story that takes place in the 1980s.

Alice, a novelist (played by Sharon Zolper) is philosophical and effervescent. Her lover, Boo (Julie Arnold Lisnet), is opinionated and competitive. Tom (Davidson Kane) is a peevish studio musician — the type who puts on eccentric jazz during a party and expects others to listen and love with a zeal equal to his own.

His girlfriend, Emily (Amy Torrey), is quiet but runs deep. She’s the one who asks what it would be like if everyone had a window “where you could see in and see what they were feeling and thinking about … so you wouldn’t always have to wonder.” In the middle of the party, while everyone else freezes and the lights go down, Emily breaks into a private, sad song about her life. She can’t be at the party in the same way as the others, and so breaks off. It’s a jarring moment, one that Torrey handles with grace (and she sings gorgeously), and one that reminds us that there’s always more going on than we seem to notice.

Libby, the host (played by Angela Roberts, who was last seen as Maggie in the theater’s production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”), is a wreck. Years ago she suffered a disfiguring accident that changed her life in unspeakable ways, and this party is her tenuous way of rejoining humanity. Her buddy, Griever (Ron Adams), uses humor to help her through the anxiety, but it is Norbert (Michael Appel), an unassuming skydiving instructor, who allows her the freedom to take some risks.

It would be going too far to say the style of the play combines Samuel Beckett with David Mamet, but there’s something of Beckett’s loopiness and of Mamet’s fine dialogue in Lucas’ script. He is, however, somewhat more whimsical than either of the other writers, although all the ends are not neatly tied up by the end of the show. His play “Reckless” was performed at Penobscot Theatre several years ago, but Lucas is probably best known for the 1990 play and subsequent film “Prelude to a Kiss” as well as the 1990 movie “Longtime Companion.”

Director Mark Torres acts as both painter and choreographer with this modern comedy that relies heavily on getting all the rhythms and situational oddities absolutely on beat. Jay Skriletz’s set, which is reminiscent of a Magritte painting, is all sky-blue with wispy clouds — one big open room that nevertheless serves as five separate living spaces. Lynne Chase’s lighting design supplies the rest of the dynamic with muted tones and shadows.

The actors all create complex characters who make us feel one thing toward them in one moment, and quite another when the mood shifts. Angela Roberts and Ron Adams turn in the most entertaining performances, however, and lead us to laughter and tears as they show life as unpredictable, solitary and fluid. “Blue Window” is a thinking person’s play, a stylized version of our very own quiet questions about existence, and, in its own quirky way, a window to the souls of modern folks.

“Blue Window” will be performed 7 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 5 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday through April 6 at Penobscot Theatre. For tickets, call 942-3333.