Over the years, disasters —both natural and man-made — have swept through the door of the modest but much-loved home of Marty and Mary Murphy, the couple at the center of “By the Water,” Sharyn Rothstein’s emotionally deep, aptly economical play, now receiving an ideal production at Northlight Theatre.

Perched on the eastern coast of Staten Island, in full view of the Atlantic Ocean, the Murphys’ house, in which they have lived for decades and raised their two sons, has just been severely battered by Hurricane Sandy, the monstrous storm that inundated much of the East Coast in October 2012. And this was not the first time in recent years that a storm caused immense damage to their property and that of their neighbors.

As for the man-made (more personal) disasters facing the Murphys, they have been around for years, but through a combination of denial, suppression, forgiveness and other coping mechanisms they have been dealt with, if not resolved, in one way or another.

‘BY THE WATER’ Highly recommended When: Through April 23 Where: Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie Tickets: $30-$81 Info: (847) 673-6300; www.northlight.org Run time: 1 hour and 40 minutes with no intermission

As Rothstein’s play opens, Marty (Francis Guinan) and Mary (Penny Slusher) — master actors in a perfect naturalistic pairing — have just gotten the OK to return to their wreck of a home, now a barely habitable structure with holes in the walls, with broken furniture and garbage strewn everywhere, and with mold probably already growing at a rapid rate. (Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s set is a superb photorealist work of destruction.) The house is a shocking sight, yet both of them are determined to remake their lives there; it is really all they have ever known.

The Murphys’ oldest son, Sal (Jordan Brown, just right as the voice of pragmatism and pain), is married and has moved into the professional class. He now lives in a Manhattan apartment (with its exorbitant rent and cramped quarters the subject of some very funny lines), and he thinks his parents are crazy, or just too stuck and deluded to move to a less vulnerable place. But they will have none of it. As for Sal’s estranged brother, Brian (finely wrought work by Joel Reitsma), he has had a troubled past and now works at an Olive Garden restaurant. And in some ways he is aligned with this parents, and more connected to this vestige of a home.

Enter Andrea Carter (Janet Ulrich Brooks, who, as always, nails her character’s attitude and accent to perfection) and her husband Philip (Patrick Clear as a man of restraint), longtime friends and neighbors of the Murphys. They have studied the offers being made by the government to buy out all the residents of the area, allowing them to move to a safer area, perhaps in New Jersey. And they have every intention of accepting the deal, which must be approved by a certain percentage of the homeowners in the area if it is to happen. This is where the trouble really starts.

Marty says the offer is just a ruse to grab land that will later be developed by and for the wealthy, but perhaps more profoundly, he is terrified of change, and of moving out of the community that has known him through thick and thin. So he decides to wage a campaign to hold on to the neighborhood. He has other reasons for doing this, too, but those should not be revealed here.

As the debate about which course to follow moves into high gear, and Mary learns some unpleasant truths, she begins to have a change of mind, and for the first time stands up to her husband, releasing an internal storm every bit as powerful as Sandy.

Serving as a winningly wrought sub-plot here is the renewed relationship between former teenage lovers, the good-hearted eternal screw-up, Brian, and the now divorced former wild girl, Emily Mancini (a winningly spirited and heartfelt turn by Amanda Drinkall). The two still share a certain chemistry, as well as the emotional and social spirit of this little corner of Staten Island.

Under Cody Estle’s pitch-perfect direction, Rothstein’s insightful work about the dynamics between parents and children, the differences in generational and class attitudes, the nature of marriage and community, the power of habit, the sources of comfort, and the true meaning of goodness is rendered with seeming effortlessness. And yes, there is a message about “global warming” here, too, but to her credit, Rothstein never needs to use the term.