Love hurts. That is the theme and name of the new comedy which opened at Johnny’s Place in St Andrew last weekend.

The play, Love Hurts, is a spirited examination of infidelity and the power dynamics of marriages. Together, the cast members are playful, energetic, and clearly appear to get along well. At moments, the audience seemed enthralled at the unravelling marriage of Lisa, played by Trishana Wright, and Andre, played by Shaun Drysdale.

The marriage of the two is in the doldrums, and Andre seems reluctant to work things out, with Lisa almost begging him to make it work. One almost feels like an inquisitive fly on the wall gawking at the power struggles playing out in their relationship. Lisa complains “you don’t touch me like you used to”, a preamble that normally spells trouble in relationships. Andre hits back that he feels “clustered and unhappy”, setting the stage for the shenanigans to follow.

Actress Kimberly Grey gave a strong performance as the stalker side chick Jenice while Michael Nicholson anchored the play well with his aphorisms and free-floating chaos as Victor, the flirtatious father-in-law who shameless flirts with Lisa’s best friend, Jade, played by actress Latoya Malcolm. Malcolm does a really great job interacting with the audience.

Playwright Orlando Sinclair has the ability to chart with consummate skill the disintegration of a relationship. And with Love Hurts, he has created a reasonably compelling character study of the Jamaican male as cheater, and what happens when the roles are reversed.

“Jamaican man caan tek bun, but dem more than willing to give it. So with this play, you have to put yourself in the position of understanding that everyone has feelings and for men, I have found that the ‘thought’ of the bun is often hotter than the bun itself,” Sinclair said.

Sinclair clearly has a gift for capturing the ordinary speech of Jamaicans, and he knows well the tangents that undergird your typical relationship: inquisitive female friends, uber-emotional stalker side chicks and Cassanova fathers who offer unsolicited advice. Sinclair charts the emotional terrain like an expert geographer. Framing the story through a female point-of-view, Sinclair shrewdly captures the hearts of the females in the audience who thoroughly loved every second of the play.

All throughout out the play, the women in the audience often interjected with shouts of : ‘watch ya’, ‘talk truth’ and even warnings of ‘mine him poison you’, that only added to the enjoyment of the play.

The emotional temperature in the play is turned up by an unexpected incident: the appearance of a sidekick in the family domicile. What would you do if a crazy sidechick turned up at your house?

This question crucially takes the play to the final moment of catharsis for Lisa and the audience. Love Hurts is playing on Saturdays and Sundays with performances at 5 and 8 pm.