Robyn Hitchcock and Nick Lowe: wry, intelligent white-haired Englishmen, consummate showmen, spellbinding songwriters about the mysteries of human behavior.

Hitchcock opened the all-acoustic evening with odes to metamorphosis (“Balloon Man,” “Trilobite,” “Olé! Tarantula”) and folktales about phantasmagoric kingdoms (“Ghost Ship,” “Idonia”). Equally entertaining was his fantastical banter about tar pits, ocelots and meerkats, consciousness and consumerism, and an old Los Angeles where Irving Thalberg was a dentist, Louis B. Mayer an osteopath.

Lowe investigated tribulations of the heart with songs ranging from his recently reissued Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust to The Convincer and his new At My Age. “Cruel to Be Kind” had a tangerine-haired girl swaying gleefully beside me; “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding” had the congregation reverently singing along.

Hitchcock joined Lowe to perform Johnny Kidd & the Pirates’ “Hungry for Love,” the Beatles’ “If I Fell” and Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue.” This marvelous show offered abundant lessons on love, time, mortality and humanity.