When interviewed for the trailer of Love the Sinner, author Drew Pautz and director Matthew Dunster were both adamant that their play looks at ‘big questions, on a personal level’, and not only does this National Theatre production keep this promise, but the big questions start coming at us from the very first scene: the play begins at a meeting between a variegated group of church leaders, set in the familiarly artificial colors and textures of a hotel conference room. The hotel is in Africa, and the issue under discussion is the compromise (or lack thereof) between official religious doctrine and a changing society, with particular regard to the acceptance or refusal of homosexuality.

The topic is controversial, the leaders are sweating, the water in their plastic bottles, keeping them safe from the African parasites, looks warm, and they are all understandably fed up with each other as they struggle to build consensus. Enter Joseph, the porter of the hotel, who is bringing everyone coffee: the delegates are not supposed to have external contact until they have reached a decision, so they all close their eyes. Except Michael, the British volunteer who is there only to take the minutes, and for whom, with Joseph, it is one-night-stand at first sight. But of course, his sexual encounter with this young black boy will not remain the strictly compartmentalised experience he had hoped for, because Joseph wants to be taken away, ‘like Helen of Troy’, and Michael is not that willing to help him.

And the questions continue: after the interval, back in England, Michael starts analysing his beliefs and deepening his religious commitment, perhaps trying to find atonement for his sin, but in fact piling more issues on the play’s back: should he or shouldn’t he have a child with his wife, Shelly? Can IVF be Christian? Is it OK to impose bland religious images on your employees in their workplace if you really believe in Jesus Christ? How responsible is anyone towards anyone else’s happiness or even survival, above and beyond their own creed?

There is no lack of big topics here; perhaps there is, rather, an overabundance of them. But Pautz’s text is blessedly devoid of intellectual smugness and lecturing, and while some scenes seem overworked, and I suspect nobody would have minded just a couple of lines less per character per dialogue, the energetic and overall excellent performances across the cast save the long exchanges from fatigue.

Instead, where Pautz and Dunster may have been trying to overachieve is in trying to add to only some of the play, and particularly to the domestic scene between Shelly and Paul, a feeling of suburban disquiet à la Martin Crimp, heightened by the minimalist design of Anna Fleischle’s otherwise to-the-point set. There is, you see, a sudden invasion of squirrels in Shelly’s and Paul’s attic, and should they be treated as pest, which they apparently officially are, or should they be trapped and released in the countryside, ‘somewhere beautiful’, as Shelly would prefer? The squirrels being, of course, the stranger lurking, an omen of things to come and of Joseph’s reappearance with his demand for assistance, a symbol of how much his physical presence becomes a screaming reminder of the cost of our Western privileges, of the eventual impossibility of turning our backs. But Pautz is only dipping his toes in this style,  and then tosses it aside as most of the evening keeps to its realistic and traditional tone, which might or might not be a missed opportunity -  the sense of stifled dangerousness possessed by the domestic confrontation is rapidly lost, and it could have made the tangle of ethical questions more subtle.

Nevertheless, Fiston Barek’s ambiguous, smiling Joseph builds up extra strength for the final moments of the play, contrasting Michael’s messed up perception of guilt and sacrifice with a determination to save himself and a resilience to suffering which some critics perceived as manipulation, but to me seemed closer to self-awareness, a refusal to be embarrassed or shamed. Jonathan Cullen plays Michael with sadness and meekness, and possibly ends up up only scratching the surface of a potentially much more complex character, but the shallowness is not completely without a point.

Barely a week after two young men from Malawi have been convicted of homosexual indecency and condemned to 14 years in prison, it would be hard to find a more topical play now on stage in London. Here and there Love the Sinner gets carried away, and bites off more than it can chew, but among the several questions it asks, there are surely some very right ones.

Till 10 July 2010