It’s the sixties in the highest arc of the go go era. A boy and a girl meet in the lavatory of a 727. They’re there to flirt and to bargain. He, a self-described Fulbright scholar “gone bad,” needs her to sneak anesthetized birds sealed in hair rollers past customs. Also narcotized poisonous snakes, small ones, sewn into the lining of a lady’s undergarment. She, the daughter of the counselor general, would like him to smuggle in some ’shrooms for her, but she herself is so stoned on her product that she’s easily convinced to flush it down the toilet. He can’t be bothered by any needs but his own. Can this budding young love flourish in the hothouse of sixties narcissism? At the Vineyard Playhouse, in the world premier of Jon Lipsky’s Walking the Volcano, we’re here to find out.

In the first act of four vignettes, Heather Girardi and Christian Pedersen play four entirely separate characters newly enmeshed in a romantic and/or carnal folie à deux. In the second scenario he’s a journalist and she a photographer in a dingy Saigon hotel room just before the Tet Offensive (“I’ve got the Nikon, you get the chopper,” she tells him at one point). In a basement recording studio, he’s a guitarist with blond curls brushing his shoulders and an unbuttoned shirt, she a just-barely-ambulatory blues singer persuaded to perform rock, clad in a clingy orange mini dress rising above matching orange panties, with orange leather boots to pull the look together. In the final vignette set in the late seventies at the Saratoga race track, a debutante in white pumps, gloves and a big-brimmed white hat perched on a white-blond bouffant, meets her old flame for cocktails, he only minutes away from rendezvousing with his fiancée, herself a debutante.

All of these couples have inflamed each other with longing and at the same time been responsible — or are destined to be — for the other’s decline into addiction or madness or even, potentially, death.

In the second act, a fresh pair of actors, stage and television star Robert Walsh and stage star Marya Lowry, enact the parts of four different yet deadly (to each other) lovers. It’s 1993 in L.A. and a Russian film producer (and a bit of a con artist, or is that redundant?), tries to convince his ex-wife, mother of his child, and former screen personality to perform in his dicey new project.

In the next vignette, it’s New Year’s Eve 1999 on Martha’s Vineyard and a divorced couple ring in the millennium in a boatyard under Vineyard Haven fireworks. He tries to revive their old shared dream of sailing around the world; his boat is finally set to launch. She is landlocked with their child and unwilling to pull up stakes and risk further heartbreak with this man on the open seas (in explaining her affection for the Island, she receives a laugh with extra oomph in it with her line, “I find West Tisbury town meetings very moving, everyone cares so much.”)

For scene three in a ramshackle cottage in Humboldt County in northern California, a shaggy, bearded, whisky-voiced dad opens his arms (or tries to) to his long-lost, tattooed and punked-out daughter (Heather Girardi reprised). Finally in the present, in a hospital room, a dying woman is visited by the rotten, no-good love of her life and, along with the Grim Reaper, Redemption comes calling for all the lovers that came before, for us, for humanity. A hint of apocalypse flares in each of the eight playlets.

This intense and gripping series of dramas was written by Playhouse artistic associate, prize-winning playwright, and professor at Boston University College of the Arts, Jon Lipsky, resident of West Tisbury. M.J. Bruder Munafo directs with her usual keen sense of visual dramatics and emotional nuance. And as ever, she must be credited, as artistic director, for bringing to the playhouse summer season another winner.

Four standout contributions to Walking the Volcano are artist Basia Jaworksa-Silva’s lava-swirl floor design, constantly changing, twinkling and glowing (in sixties fashion) under the lights (Fred J. Hancock), psychedelic video projections by Stephen M. Zablotny, and original music and sound design — so integral to the changing times — by Wesley Nagy. Once again for the playhouse, Jim Novack works his magic with sound design (he is also production and technical manager); soundboard op by Braden Munafo; stage manager, Christine Lomaka; tech director and master electrician is Andrea Myers. Assistant stage manager is Tessa Reynolds; master carpenter is the ever-ingenious Paul Munafo.

If we awarded Tonys on the Island, costumes by Chelsea McCarthy and hair and wigs by Rita Troy would deserve to stand behind the four actors as they accepted their trophies for the versatile roles they inhabited. From a big head of hair with a blond flip in it, to a hippie dad’s plaid shirt, navy boxers, and hiking boots, Ms. McCarthy and Ms. Troy performed a job and a half, all of it aided by dressers Alexandra Spohrer and James Sanford for what have to be record costume changes in the wings.

In other credits, all of them newsworthy in this tour de force production: construction assistant, Rich Kugler, administrative assistant, Geneva Monks, box office, Danielle Patterson, house managers Anna Marie D’Addarie and Linda Smith, poster and season program, Stephen M. Zablotny.

Walking the Volcano will be running through August 8. For nightly times or tickets,call the Vineyard Playhouse at 508-696-6300.