We first meet Jack, a slight and low-key chap with a full head of dreadlocks and a reggae tune always ready to go on his impossibly retro portable cassette tape recorder, when he's sitting in the apartment of his best friend, Clyde. Both are New York City limo drivers, and the way that playwright Bob Glaudini dumps them into our laps in the first scene of the affecting and cutting-edge comedy "Jack Goes Boating," you're not quite sure what they mean to each other.

Are they casual co-workers sharing a lunch break? Oversexed pick-up artists teaming up to find their next conquests? Drug buddies wanting to kill time by smoking a few? Or fast and furious friends who'd do anything for each other?

Considering that even people who have known each other for years could fall into any of the above categories, such is the fun of discovery in this contemporary, bittersweet, full-of-verve outing at Fresno City College. It's the kind of play that takes a good half hour to settle into, which is a fine thing. Director Charles Erven finds the edge in the material -- and, believe me, with its graphic depictions of drug use, that edge is pretty wide -- without making it into a spectacle, which isn't as easy as it sounds. (When was the last time a community college production had a hookah wrangler?)

Jack (played with great commitment by an amiable and talented Magnus Chhan), isn't exactly a high roller in the Big Apple. His great ambition in life is to get a job working for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. He's no lady killer, either. Shy and with a tendency toward nervous tics, he doesn't exactly project the image of an alpha male. (His reggae fixation, with all the casualness that implies, doesn't help, either.)

His friend Clyde (Nick Haas, who wavers between softie and tough guy with considerable charm) and Clyde's wife, Lucy (a superb, brash Danielle Cash) want to set Jack up with one of her co-workers. Connie (Sydney Mason, who tackles a complex role with gusto) is a bit of an odd duck herself. She's wracked with insecurities and isn't very good at her job. But she knows she wants a relationship, and she's willing to think out of the box when it comes to finding a nice guy. The question: Will she and Jack manage to be conventional enough to connect?

Glaudini's script has a sharp, spare, modern feel that seems particularly atuned to these short-attention-span, "The Hills"-fixated times: lots of brief scenes and frank relationship talk that doesn't get too deep except in a few choice moments. (Which, when you think about it, is pretty true to life; most people don't go around sprouting profundities all day.) Director Charles Erven meshes well with the material, and he encourages a bouncy but not too overplayed physicality in the staging. (A series of scenes in which a Spandex-clad Clyde, giving swimming lessons at a neighborhood pool, is wonderful, and the way that Clyde and Jack at one moment repeatedly put on and remove their cold-weather gear is a comic highlight.) The love story is fine, but what stands out in the play is the relationship between the two men as they navigate their relationship through complicated waters.

Eimi Vasquez's set, which takes us from Clyde's living room to Connie's bedroom to the pool, along with other locales, works well in the intimate studio-theater space. And Christopher R. Boltz's lighting design shifts us around with great dexterity, as well as dwelling lovingly on that thick cloud of "smoke" hanging above.

"Jack Goes Boating" opened in New York in 2006 (starring Philip Seymour Hoffman), and it has a fresh, contemporary feel. In this production there are a few wobbles in the characterizations of these complex characters, particularly in the case of the frazzled Connie -- I never quite got a complete grasp on where she's coming from -- and I'm not sure if that's because of writing, direction or acting, but it isn't a deal killer. Wacky and sensitive, it's a play that defies easy description. Well, except for the hookah wrangler. There are only so many ways you can put that on a resume.

Pictured: Danielle Cash as Lucy, Nick Haas as Clyde and Magnus Chhan as Jack.