Finding Pot & Box on Felch St. for the first time in the dark isn’t the easiest of tasks - I’ll confess that I missed the building entirely on the first pass - but The New Theatre Project’s lovely production of Jose Rivera’s “Cloud Tectonics” make it well worth the effort.

The 75 minute drama tells the surreal story of an LAX luggage handler, Anibal (Samer Ajluni), who, while driving home in a rainstorm, picks up a pregnant hitchhiker, Celestina (Jamie Weeder). When he learns she has nowhere to go, he takes her to his place, where she soon tells him that although she appears to be in her 20s, she’s 54, and that she’s been pregnant for two years.

The night gets stranger still when Anibal’s brother Nelson (Frank Gutierrez), who serves in the military, arrives without warning and quickly falls for Celestina. He asks her await his return in two years. And while Anibal and Celestina, after Nelson leaves, spend the evening falling in love, Nelson suddenly returns, claiming that two years have passed in the world outside Anibal’s home.

If this synopsis of “Cloud” makes you feel like you’ve just stumbled into Gabriel Garcia Marquez-land, you’re getting warm; Marquez was indeed an early influence on, and mentor to, Rivera, and the play’s magical realism, in regard to time, helps to tell an unusual love story in a gorgeous, bracingly fresh and compelling way.

Rivera’s script is packed with evocative poetry, but it also offers wonderful moments of wit. When Nelson returns, and Anibal is trying to make sense of the time discrepancy, his first utterance to Celestina is, “Who’s been paying the lighting bill?” - precisely the kind of practical question we’d all ask in the face of such absurdity.

As this moment demonstrates, Anibal is the character with whom we most identify, and Ajluni does really good work as a man who’s both enchanted and baffled by this unexpected turn in his life. Gutierrez, meanwhile, manages his profanity-riddled dialogue with commanding ease, and makes Nelson’s attraction to Celestina sweet and meaningful, despite the speed with which it happens.

The show’s center, though, is Weeder, who masterfully imbues Celestina with an ethereal aura while still keeping the character grounded and human. She isn’t a being who magically exists out-of-time as a kind of fairy or sprite; she’s a real woman who’s both blessed and cursed by living out of sync with the rest of the world. And Weeder registers the joy and pain of this condition with subtle, but profound, power.

Keith Paul Medelis designed “Cloud”’s set, which consists of Anibal’s all-white, blank canvas-like home, as well as the lighting and sound, which play pivotal roles in striking a balance between the worlds of dream and reality.

Aside from one little moment of awkward staging early on - wherein Ajluni and Weeder stand apart, not looking at each other while talking and riding in Anibal’s car - director Ben Stange shapes the show with a keen sense of when to apply restraint, and when to let the script sing out with a full voice.

And after watching “Cloud”’s stirring final moment, you’ll likely never see a hitchhiker at the side of the road in quite the same way again.

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.