“A Beautiful View” is a verbally dexterous examination of a long-term relationship, with all its positive, negative, predictable and surprising moments. Its basic plot — containing some comedy and some trauma — is credible enough, but as a love story the play fails to convince: its characters are always at arms-length, approaching each other then repelling quickly, their ephemeral emotions making them distant and dispassionate.

Playwright Daniel MacIvor has chosen to tell the story of this love affair through the eyes of two women, Lane and Max, although the play is decidedly not about lesbian relationships. It’s about how human beings reach out to one another, how they understand, misunderstand and often misread one another.