The Chinese language is all that one seems to be hearing lately. Not only did presidential candidate Jon Huntsman resort to Mandarin while rebuking Mitt Romney during a recent debate, but David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish, currently playing on Broadway, has much of its dialogue delivered in Chinese with English supertitles for those audience members who don’t happen to be multi-lingual. Like that play, Zayd Dohrn’s Outside People also deals with cross-cultural themes concerning a hapless American visiting China who finds himself in way over his head.

Co-presented by the Vineyard Theatre and Naked Angels, this dark comedy concerns a young American, Malcolm (Matthew Dellapina), who has traveled to Beijing to work for his old college buddy Da Wei, or David (Nelson Lee), a successful businessman who prides himself on his ability to bridge Eastern and Western culture. On his first night there, the severely jet-lagged Malcolm finds himself set up with the gorgeous Xiao Mei (Li Jun Li).

Despite Malcolm’s awkward shyness and inability to speak Chinese, the pair quickly hit off. They begin a tentative romance, which is further complicated by the fact that she’s been hired to tutor Malcolm in Chinese. But when the relationship starts to turn serious, David forcefully expresses his objections, claiming that Xiao Mei is only using Malcolm to make a new life for herself in America.

There’s an complexity and ambiguity to the characters—the fourth being Samanya (Sonequa Martin-Green), David’s girlfriend, a transplant from Cameroon—that makes the play consistently intriguing even if it never quite lives up to the ambitiousness of its themes. But under the skillful direction of Evan Cabnet, it moves along briskly, and the pungently comic dialogue garners many laughs. The playwright is admirably unafraid to not spell things out, the best example being the scene depicting an intense confrontation between David and Xiao Mei that is all the more compelling for its being spoken in Chinese, with only the performers’ body language and vocal delivery cluing us in to its meaning.

The performances are terrific: Dellapina infuses Malcolm with a comic, Woody Allen-style neuroticism; As Xiao Mei, Jun Li is both sexy and sweet while subtly hinting at an underlying steeliness; Lee is hilarious as the swaggering, macho David; and Martin-Green brings an edgy sultriness to Samanya.

Vineyard Theatre, 108 E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. www.VineyardTheatre.org. Through Jan. 29.