THIS BOY’S IN LOVE is about a boy looking for and possibility, finding, love.  That’s it.  No boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy. Just … meet, struggle a bit, settle a bit and a kinda, sorta happy ending.  If that really was it, the show would be a funny, charming and entertaining 75 minutes in the theatre. Which it kinda, sorta is.

However.  What happens in this multi layered show, written and performed by Adriano Cappelleta and directed by Johann Walraven, is more than the gay rom-com it aspires to be. It is a well-crafted theatrical rendering of the almost impossible task of accepting or giving love.  Whether you are a boy, a girl or a small fluffy animal!

Ado, a jobbing Sydney actor, thinks he is open to love.  He just wants to settle down on a couch more or less.  While he is teaching Romes and Jules (that’s Romeo and Juliet to those who don’t speak disenfranchised teenager) in the park, he is approached by Felix and love ensues.  Felix is younger and more career driven than the perennially out of work Ado and is written as a pretty special kind of boy.

And that is the heart of the meta and philosophical aspects of the show.  The writing is really, really good.

The performance is great of course.  No less that we would expect from an artist with Adriano Cappelletta’s background.  His craft is an ability to engage an audience and pull us into his world with a sweet demeanour combined with skilled movement, mime and singing.  That boy can dance! But it’s not showy or grandstanding even when he accomplishes a tour de force scene of clubbing on an E.  At the end of one of the soft romantic songs, ADO raises his shoulders for a few seconds and the audience did too.  Then we sighed with him, pining for our own elusive loves.

We understand and relate to Ado through his interactions, initially with a series of flannie shirts. Or his relationship with on-stage keyboardist, Daryl Wallis who gives a warm, rye performance.  Or how he draws, literally in one case, the people who populate the story. The characters speak to each other in a clearly defined way even when they are kissing on the dance floor.  That’s no mean feat.

But the text is the invisible hand at work guiding Ado and Felix.  The Pirandello aspects of the show are brought home towards the end when the characters refer to the playwright directly.  They respond to the way they are written, Jessica Rabbit style.  Can a boy, blinded by the trappings of wealth, still access and understand his true emotions?  Does the fact that Felix is written as Human Rights lawyer have any bearing on the audience’s wish for Ado to love him? And in the real world is unconditional love as possible as the writing makes it?

THIS BOY’S IN LOVE  is just a warm, funny, musical story worthy of its standing ovation … until you leave the venue.  When we reflect on the beginning in light of the ending we can’t help but try to see our own loves as a story we wrote for ourselves.  Was our dance with love just an overwriting of their text by our own creative penning?    What a delightful way to encourage reflection.  I might be slightly in love with this boy myself.

THIS BOY’S IN LOVE is playing the Old Fitzroy theatre until Sunday 31st May. Remaining performances are tonight and Friday night at 9.30pm and Sunday at 7.30pm.