The Mystery of Love and Sex
ACT, 2016
Written by Bathsheba Doran
Scenery by Matthew Smucker
Lighting by Andrew Smith
Costumes by Cathy Hunt
Sound by Rob Witmer
Part earnest sexual identity quest, part post-“Will and Grace” sit-rom-com, the play is bright and busy in Allison Narver’s animated staging, and the profusion of laugh lines heartily amused much of ACT’s opening-night audience.
And when Charlotte and Jonny finally come clean with one another, Narver’s staging busts open with a glimpse of exhilarating child’s play that reveals much more about their bond than the play’s verbal navel-gazing does.
Love is confusing. Life is complicated. Sex is messy. Friendship is important. Family is crazy. Bathsheba Doran’s The Mystery of Love & Sex, a slight but charming play now running at ACT Theatre, navigates the tortuous emotional paths of life’s precious relationships. Directed by Allison Narver, it’s hardly groundbreaking subject matter, but handled with enough tenderness it remind us why artists and audiences alike gravitate to stories like this.
There’s something elemental and truthful in seeing years of pressure and erosion turn the bright, scattered gems of young love into the emotional bedrock of a life. These are the stories that tug at our desperate, lonely, romantic psyches, no matter how many times we’ve seen them before. There’s a strange comfort in the striving, just as there’s comfort in seeing life’s constant, inevitable change played out, terrifying as it can be.