Someone who, when watching movies only selects action/adventure or comedy from the genre list, may not enjoy None Too Fragile’s production of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Sunset Limited.” But worry not; there’s a lot going for it.

McCarthy’s dark drama has very little action. Director Sean Derry has provided stage directions – with the two characters who make up the cast moving from table to sofa or maybe pacing a bit. Otherwise, the play has two men (one called Black, an African American; and one called White, a Caucasian) sitting around a small table across from each other in the single room of Black’s apartment, discussing the meaning (for Black) or the meaninglessness (for White) of life.

As the play begins, we learn that White, a disillusioned professor, had attempted suicide by trying to throw himself under a New York City subway. Black, an ex-con, stopped him. Not only did he prevent the suicide, but he is virtually holding White prisoner in his small apartment in order to keep him from trying it again (as suggested by all the locks and bolts on the door upstage).

White was fed up with life and wanted to ride into the sunset, as suggested in the play’s title. Black, on the other hand, had found religion while penned up and with it a measure of happiness and kindness.

The idea of death saturates the play, as one might imagine, but ultimately there are other themes that emerge, all ending with the notion of a kind of dread about loss and, with that, all hope gone. It’s a Pandora’s box, where all the psychic evil of the men’s lives is let loose, with the only thing remaining being a form of hope.

At one point White says that the only thing he can’t let go of, or give up, is giving up. Black looks to his God and connection to his fellow humans as his holdout from falling apart. At the end of the play, both men fearfully wrangle with the same type of dread. In the interest of not giving the plot resolution away, it’s safe to say the ending isn’t all that happy.

Myron Lewis as Black and Richard Worswick as White do estimable jobs at conveying the complexity of the situation and the emotional bearing of their characters. Lewis plays Black as an affable, sure, smart and caring person when dealing with the emotional wreckage of another person’s life. Ultimately he starts to fall apart a little, and Lewis shows the strain of his character.

Worswick’s White is all intellect, all ratiocination, winding through arguments about God and life and feeling with words and more words. The words seem to become an armor that protects him. One of his best scenes is when he talks about God. He ironically, but in all seriousness and bitterness, expounds that at the dawn of creation the God of all possibilities could have done anything – and yet ended up choosing this existence as the pinnacle of his creation. As he implies, life could have been in any form, and God did this and called it good. His is a fundamental dismay, and that has to be hard to get over.

Myron Lewis, as Black, and Richard Worswick, as White, in “The Sunset Limited.” Photo courtesy of None Too Fragile

The structure of the play provides a small ray of hope for the characters. The first movement has the two men getting to know each other and where they philosophically stand. In the middle, they sit down to a meal (with a working stove and running water on stage) that Black learned how to plan. As they talk about the food, there seems to be a genuine connection between the characters that makes the audience think that human warmth may be enough to offset the angst. Then the play heads to darker territory, with White getting caught up in his essential misery and wanting out of there, while Black is unable to convince him to stay.

Go see the play. It will make you think – a lot.

Cormac McCarthy’s “The Sunset Limited” will be performed at 8 p.m. Thursday-Sunday at None Too Fragile Theatre, 1841 Merriman Rd., Akron; 330-671-4563; www.nonetoofragile.com. Tickets are $20 (or pay what you will).