Photo by Scott Suchman.

Once party affiliation became less splashy for news networks’ interactive election maps, the media decided to divvy us up into colors. Red state, blue state, shades of purple for those swing areas if they really wanted to get fancy. The underlying narrative, particularly when those shades of purple are left out of the conversation, is that red and blue make hard stops at congressional and state borders. Like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann, they just don’t mix.

But in National Airport one dark and stormy night, they’re forced to do just that. In this world premiere by playwright Joe Calarco, all flights are grounded, and there’s just one seat left in an airport lounge for Patty (Sherri L. Edelen), a brash, conservative, deep-fried southern momma waiting on a flight to London where she had grand plans to see The Lion King on the West End. That seat just happens to be at a table next to Margaret (Nancy Robinette), a slightly neurotic, matronly East Coast liberal with a Kennedy obsession.

For the next 90 minutes, the pair get to know one another. Eagerly, for the gregarious Patty, who lacks the ability to sit silently or still, and reluctantly for Margaret, who doesn’t seem to get out much and meets new people even less frequently. It might be trite to say that the women discover that they have more in common than they thought, but it’s true. And if that had been Calarco’s primary point, this would have fallen with a resounding thud, complete with the overly obvious can’t-we-all-just-get-along sermonizing.