I am a romantic at heart. It was the case that I was always going to go and see this new production. It was made even more appealing  when it was announced that the play would open on Valentine’s Day,

This was a play, appropriately, with a big heart. American playwright Bathsheba Doran has a lot of love for her four characters, their foibles, confusions, adventures.

First we meet Charlotte and Jonny. They have been best friends since they were nine, and now are in their early twenties. Charlotte is white and Jewish, Jonny is black and Baptist.

The playwright, interestingly, catches their friendship on the cusp of change. After so many years it now has to find a different form for it to survive.The play reveals them to be opposites in more than race and religion. Their natures, their essences, are very different too. Charlotte is open, charming, vivacious. Jonny is reserved and secretive, messed up after growing up in a very strict, conservative Baptist household with a domineering mother at the head. Charlotte is experimenting with her sexuality and identity whilst at University, whilst Jonny claims to be toeing the family line.

Contessa Treffone and Thuso Lekwape give strong performances in their respective roles.

The play starts with Charlotte and Jonny having Charlotte’s parents over for dinner at Charlotte’s apartment, so we get to meet the play’s other two characters pretty much straight away.

We soon find out that Howard and Lucinda’s marriage has long lost its sheen. Crime fiction novelist Howard has taken to having a mistress. Lucinda spends much of her time smoking cigarettes and delivering cynical, sarcastic barbs. The dinner party shows the couple very curious as to what form the relationship between their daughter and Jonny is and what might happen in the future.

It was good to see Deborah Galanos and Nicholas Papademetriou working well together again as Lucinda and Howard after seeing them as Martha and George in Albee’s classic Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?

One of Sydney’s leading fringe directors, Anthony Skuse impresses again with this production. The set by Emma Vine is a stand-out with the upside down tree a stand-out, referencing the way the characters get ‘thrown around’ during the play.

Whilst Bathsheba Doran’s THE MYSTERY OF LOVE AND SEX does not solve this great conundrum, it does make for an eloquent, touching night at the theatre. Recommended, THE MYSTERY OF LOVE AND SEX, part of the 2017 Mardi Gras season of plays, is playing at the Eternity Playhouse, Darlinghurst until March 12.