“Wait a minute. I’ve seen that face before. You’re not lying right now, are you?”

“No.”

“What a shame.”

It has taken an extra four years for Michael Gurr’s play “Sex Diary of an Infidel” to make its way to the stage of the Penumbra Theatre Company. Sometimes what seems like a setback ends up paying off in a big way, and this is one of those times. Since Penumbra’s first abortive attempt to mount this award-winning Australian play as part of its 2001-2002 season, the script has only become more relevant, and resonates in ways that are very current to the world of 2006 and the way we live now. It is funnier, darker, more intelligent, more menacing, more romantic, and also I think much more readily understood by an American audience since we’ve had our consciousness of the wider world opened up in major ways in the past four years.

And lucky us, Minnesota gets to play host to the American premiere of the play. We get the first look, and quite a look it is.

The thing I appreciated most about the production is how wrong I was about it.

Every time I thought I had the play figured out - the title, the plot, the characters, the theme, the ending - I was wrong.

Rather than being frustrating, it was actually an incredibly rewarding experience. Because the play and this production were never trying to trick me. I was just interpreting things incorrectly. Once the play revealed what was really going on, it all made perfect sense - and I felt a little smarter for being able to keep up.

Essentially, it’s a play about lies and liars, the exploiters and those being exploited, the notion of who is a foreigner and who calls a place their home. It is also about the basic human need for a little tenderness, and the lengths people will go to in order to get it.

“Sex Diary of an Infidel” is a funny play, and a romantic play, but it’s not a romantic comedy. It’s a play that deals with global politics on a very personal level, to the point where it doesn’t seem political so much as it seems simply human. It’s a play in which the idea of one person being the hero and one person being the villain doesn’t apply, because everybody is taking turns putting on those masks. It’s a play in which two very different parts of the world share the same bare stage and ultimately fuse together.

Jean (Carolyn Pool) and Martin (Sam L. Landman), an Australian journalist/photographer team of lovers, go on assignment together to get a story on the sex tourism trade in the Philippines. Through pimp Max (Phil Kilbourne), they are introduced to Toni (Alexis Camins), a pre-op transsexual boy/girl selling herself to pay her for operation, and to fund her brother’s rebel military projects against the government and foreign powers. Meanwhile, back in Australia, Jean’s sister Laura (Laura Esping) on house-sitting duty meets up with Tony (Casey Greig), one of the subjects of Jean’s award-winning series of articles on the Australian sex trade who just won’t go away quietly.

By the end of the play, nearly everyone has switched partners, if not physically, then emotionally. How these pairings happen says a lot about both the characters and the worlds they choose to live in, as well as the worlds they have thrust upon them.

The script is an elaborate series of short scenes ricocheting back and forth between Australia and the Philippines. In the wrong hands, the scene shifts alone could sink the play by bogging down its momentum. But Ching Valdes-Aran directs “Sex Diary...” nimbly (assisted by Julie McGarvie), as if the actors were all participating in a complex dance. The ensemble glides from one scene to the next, sometimes with scenes bleeding into and interlocking with one another. Yet with all this, the story never gets lost.

I saw a preview, and while there were a couple of technical glitches, the production kept on moving. If anything, the minor flubs just made it clearer that the story and the actors could just keep on going, regardless, and the whole thing held together in a manner that was kind of breathtaking. After the previews, when the tech has fully caught up to the acting and the text, (and it’s mighty close right now) this show’s going to be a rocket.

The setting by Loy Arcenas is very spare - wooden planks for the floor, a couple of upright posts, a backdrop of fabric that is by turns translucent or opaque. Apart from a couple of chairs and a well-chosen prop or two (courtesy of Thomas L. Valach), it is down to the actors and the words once again to set the time and place, which they do - aided greatly by some evocative lighting design from Mark Dougherty, sound by MALO, and costumes by Alexandra Gould. It’s a rare treat to see all the elements of design meshing so well with performance.

It’s also a lot of fun to watch Carolyn Pool sink her teeth into a character as strong and resourceful as Jean. Often, Carolyn plays weaker or more neurotic characters, and while no one comes unglued on stage quite as well as she does, it’s great to watch Carolyn play the character that takes other people apart for a change, shuts them out or shuts them down. Jean starts off seeming like the heroine of the piece, but there’s a lot of anti-heroine, and secrets, lurking below the surface.

Equally fascinating is Alexis Camins as Toni - a boy for hire on his way to becoming a girl. Toni is also evolving politically from the beginning of the play until its final image, centered around her. This journey is more subtle, and the fact that Toni retains her sweetness and her connection to God, even as she trains for a much darker purpose, makes the end of play all the more unsettling. Seeing the man, Alexis, in an audience talk back session after the performance reminded me again how complete and convincing his gender-bending turn on stage is.

Casey Grieg as former hustler Tony, and Laura Esping as Laura, a woman who may or may not have all her wits about her, are a very entertaining, and slightly bewildering, odd couple. The possibility of real danger alongside the comedy makes for a romance around which you can’t quite let your guard down.

Phil Kilbourne and Sam L. Landman as pimp Max and photographer Martin, respectively, are great both together and separately as the men in Jean’s life. Which one is better for her, and which of them is better off without her, is a debate that the ground keeps shifting under. But it’s an amusing effort getting to know them better.

Though there is some adult language in the script, it is notable for being a play about the sex trade in which no one gets naked, and none of the sex on stage is paid for (at least not in money - there are other prices to be paid, and paid they are).

“Sex Diary of an Infidel” is a script in which there’s a diary that’s not really about sex. The question of who exactly the infidel is in this ensemble at the end of the day could spark a very interesting debate. Frankly, you could make a good case for almost any of them.

This isn’t really about trading bodies. It’s more, to borrow a loaded phrase, about hearts and minds.

It always does my heart good to see a theater that is not only in the business of entertaining, but also of raising questions that have no easy answers - the kind of productions that compel you to have those discussions with yourself and others after the show, because the play won’t let you go.

Highly recommended.

“Sex Diary of an Infidel” runs from February 10th through March 5th, 2006 at the Penumbra Theatre Company, 270 North Kent Street in St. Paul. For tickets and more information, call 651-224-3180 or visit www.penumbratheatre.org