Two girls meet, fall in love, kiss and are attacked. One goes into a coma, the other is left to pick up the pieces and deal with unwelcome media exposure. That’s STOP/KISS in a nutshell — except that a nutshell big enough to contain a play of this scope would give that little squirrel-thing from Ice Age an aneurysm the size of South America.

STOP/KISS, written by Diana Son and directed here by Justin Emeka, OC ’95, is a play about two girls falling in love that strives to both ignore and incorporate all the societal assumptions surrounding homosexuals. How it achieves this artful balance is by ricocheting back and forth between the two. Chronologically, the play hinges on the couple’s first (and only) kiss, with every other scene taking place before and after it, respectively.

The play opens with the first time Callie, played by senior Liza Dickinson, and Sarah, played by junior Gabriela Trigo-McIntyre, meet, but the second scene sees Callie giving her official statement to a sympathetic, though suspicious, detective, played by junior Darryle Johnson, following a vicious attack on her and Sarah that has left the latter in a coma. In a somewhat ingenious theatrical coup, the climax of the play, then, is the kiss itself.

This element of the play, however, makes for some difficulties in presentation, although the cast and crew here in Oberlin were almost entirely successful at overcoming them. Sometimes the play keeps the audience so off balance, leapfrogging from love to politics and back again so abruptly that motion sickness could foreseeably set in, the flow of the story could be lost.

Just as momentum is building between Callie and Sarah, we’re all of a sudden shunted off to a hospital scene that, while chilling and effective, brings the audience down, in a sense, from the previous high. So then when we’re shunted back to Callie and Sarah, it’s in a state of square one.

Still, these are minor criticisms. The play was fantastic. Dickinson and Trigo-McIntyre delivered complex performances that perfectly illustrated the script’s wild blend of pathos and comedy. Dickinson, especially, was handed the momentous task of having to play Callie simultaneously falling in love and in as state of overriding grief.

She rose to the occasion and, in fact, kept right on going, leaving the occasion choking in her dust. It was one of those performances where you think you can see the seams (you know you should be able to see the seams), but you can’t: it’s that damn seamless. The rough edges are conspicuous due only to their complete and utter absence.

Senior Munib Raad was a delight as George, Callie’s casual sex guy-friend whom she pushes out in favor of Sarah. Raad was the epitome of the gregarious egotistical demi-boyfriend as a guy who watches himself in the mirror the night after and suggests the local burrito joint over a spendy date at a chic restaurant. His George was loud, obnoxious and crude, and Raad’s personality was completely subsumed by that of his character’s.

Emeka’s direction bore all the marks of a seasoned pro. His deft management of the play’s tricky structure proved the key ingredient in making this production a successful one. And by successful, what I mean to say is that once it was over I felt like I’d been slugged in the gut. Because no matter how beautiful the kiss at the end is, the knowledge of the girls’ immediate fate, embodied literally in this production by the presence of sophomore Matt Castleman as their attacker, makes it a devastating thing to watch.