Review: ‘The Mystery of Love and Sex’ Looks at Identity and Secrets Too

The detective work in “The Mystery of Love & Sex,” a perfectly wonderful new play by Bathsheba Doran that opened on Monday at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater, extends well beyond the matters of high importance referred to in the title. In this tender and funny exploration of the lives of two couples from two generations, Ms. Doran also probes such fertile mysteries as the fluidity of identity, our ability to keep secrets from both our family and even ourselves, and the difficulty — and the rewards — of forgiveness.

Nevertheless, love and sex are very much at the center of the play, which is among the season’s finest so far. Ms. Doran (“Kin”) delves into so many matters of the heart that her play gains an almost dizzying momentum. By the end you may feel giddy, as if you’d just stepped off a whirling theme-park ride. Although there are just four characters onstage (very briefly a fifth), Ms. Doran’s drama is so packed with humanity that it seems infinitely larger, like a chart depicting the sexual and emotional anatomy of us all.

Charlotte (Gayle Rankin) and Jonny (Mamoudou Athie) are hosting a dinner for her parents as the play opens. They are still in college, so the trappings are as modest as the meal, which is basically a salad and some bread. The Southern-reared Lucinda (Diane Lane) takes this in stride, chirping perhaps a few times too many about how “bohemian” it all is, while Howard (Tony Shalhoub), who’s Jewish and from New York, grimaces at the prospect of sitting on the floor and eating bread with no butter. (Mr. Shalhoub makes a priceless bit of comedy from Howard’s complicated attempt to wedge himself under the low table.)

When Jonny gallantly offers to go buy some butter, the questions from Charlotte’s parents grow quickly pointed. Jonny, who’s black, practically grew up with the family, so close were the two kids when they first met, at age 9. Their closeness never faltered through the tumultuous teenage years, and to Howard’s chagrin, Charlotte even decided to forgo Yale to join Jonny at an unnamed Southern university nearer where they grew up. Now it seems their relationship has grown even more intimate, and Charlotte’s parents want to know how exactly they should adjust their perspective.

Charlotte implies that, yes, she and Jonny are “very much beyond ‘dating,’ ” and that their friendship is evolving. But after her parents have left, we see just how complicated that evolution may be. Jonny, who was raised as a strict Baptist, remains a virgin and plans to keep it that way, although he’s dated a few girls. Charlotte has no such scruples, and, as she grows more bold with the help of the wine, confesses she has a bit of a crush on a girl at school.

Drunker still, after trying and failing to get Jonny to dance (“It’s not an inherent ability,” he notes wryly), Charlotte makes a comically blunt attempt at seduction, eventually draping herself dramatically across the dinner table, naked. Jonny, who radiates an almost palpable sense of unease, brings up the differences in their faiths (she was raised Jewish), and the fact that in her state sex would practically be date rape.

“Doesn’t it feel inevitable to you?” Charlotte asks, and Jonny retorts, “It feels like an inevitable way to ruin the friendship.” Although her embarrassment is painful to watch, as Charlotte curls into herself with mortification, their friendship, it seems, will remain rock-solid.

“The Mystery of Love and Sex” brims with surprising revelations as its characters peel back the surface layers of their personalities to reveal new aspects of themselves, so it wouldn’t be fair to further elucidate the plot. Not for nothing, however, does Howard write pulpy detective stories: a clever mirroring of the play’s twisting narrative paths.

I can say that tensions erupt between just about everyone at some point, although Lucinda remains elegantly above the fray for the most part, even as her marriage with Howard is seen to be fraying, or rather to have frayed. The play spans just five years, but infinite change can take place in much less time, particularly when you are in the equally unsettling and stimulating stage of young adulthood, exploring the possibility of becoming someone you never thought you’d be.

Then again, the middle years of marriage, when expectations confront disillusionment, may be equally loaded with emotional minefields. Ms. Doran’s beautifully wise play affirms the adage that the only guarantee in life is permanent change.

With his usual felicity, the director Sam Gold draws out superbly layered work from his cast. Ms. Rankin, last seen on Broadway as Fräulein Kost in “Cabaret,” gives a breakthrough performance as the outgoing Charlotte, who is nevertheless more sensitive than she at first appears. Her nuanced portrayal of a young woman hungry for self-discovery — and for the rapture of mutual love — underscores how far Charlotte has moved beyond a trauma in her childhood.

Mr. Athie, who appeared last fall in the terrific play “Generations” at Soho Rep, also offers a moving portrait of a young man in search of himself. Rigid with unease and burdened by inner conflicts stemming in part from his religious background, Jonny softens and matures almost before our eyes, so that by the end of the play his entire aspect — physical as well as emotional — seems to have greatly altered.

Ms. Lane suffuses the stage with a natural glamour, her beauty more radiant than ever. Although Lucinda has the graciousness of a Southern belle, she ultimately proves to be perhaps the most, well, bohemian of all the play’s characters. She even dares to engage in what has become one of America’s social taboos: smoking cigarettes! (And, perhaps less daringly, marijuana, too.)

And Mr. Shalhoub, a master of angst, embodies another distinctive low-grade neurotic. Blindsided by the discovery that Jonny has published (online) a study of his novels that suggests they are infused with all manner of toxins — racism, homophobia, misogyny — Howard flies into an understandable rage at Jonny’s ingratitude, but perhaps too because he cannot entirely disavow an unpalatable truth about himself.

Some may find that Ms. Doran has stuffed her play with a few too many sexual convolutions, or that some developments have a whiff of contrivance. Charlotte’s strong reaction to Jonny’s thesis paper struck me as somewhat overstated, for instance.

But I’m hesitant to even bother with quibbles. “The Mystery of Love & Sex” is written with such compassion, such wry wisdom about the vicissitudes of loving attachments, that I emerged from the theater into yet another frigid day feeling warmed from within.