If you’ve ever wondered why hourglasses are filled with sand, Gregory S. Moss’ Indian Summer might just have an answer for you. Not that the play (at Playwrights Horizons through June 26) has anything to do with a history of the device, at least not directly, but because Moss uses a sandy setting to tell a story about our desire to capture time. Set in a Rhode Island beachtown over the course of a languorous summer, the play introduces us to Daniel (Owen Campbell), a teenager who’s been left with his grandpa George (Jonathan Hadary) after his mother decided she had to “sort things out”. Preoccupied with the reasons behind this unexpected abandonment, and trying to stay away from grandpa’s kookiness, Daniel spends most of his time at the beach (conveyed in a stunningly simple set by Dane Laffrey).

One day from behind the dunes, Daniel sees Izzy (Elise Kibler) arrive. She’s a feisty local girl who chastises Daniel for trying to steal her little brother’s bucket. Not that he was trying to, but Izzy’s volatile temperament rarely allows her time to think and see things through. After threatening to have her meathead boyfriend Jeremy (the scene stealing Joe Tippett) beat him, she leaves. Only to find herself returning time and time again to hang out with him. The two develop the kind of chaste romance you know they will remember until the day they die, and it is here that Moss so beautifully uses sand as an element that holds precious footprints of memories only for as long as the tide allows.