Tiny Dynamite Productions lives up to its name with Martin Crimp’s intimate and explosive The Country. A doctor (Carl Granieri) and his wife Corinne (Emma Gibson) verbally spar in their cave-like old home in David O’Connor’s nuanced, riveting production. This couple may never have been happy, but their tense stalemate is shattered when he brings home an unconscious stranger (Laura Michelle Edoff) he supposedly found on a rural road. Who she is and what’s really happening unfolds gradually and indirectly. Gibson’s Corinne is brittle and dangerous — well-matched by Granieri’s secretive, defensive caregiver. Both are thrown by Edoff’s intensely sharp, clearly conniving Rebecca when she wakes up. Debates about words like “sententiousness” and “solicitous” are tips of jagged icebergs, and poetic statements like “the stone has devoured my heart” waft like smoky haze. The Country doesn’t reveal situations and events in a straightforward, tidy way, but challenges us to divine a story through hints and clues, making up our own minds. Not everyone enjoys such a puzzle, but those who do will find this an engrossing, unnerving experience. 

Through July 1, $15-$20, Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 825 Walnut St., 215-574-3550, tinydynamite.org.