Kiss produced by Haven Theatre (and playing at The Den Theatre) is a stealthily crafted play. Delightfully engaging, loaded with laughs, it tells the story of two couples, none married, who double date regularly to watch soap operas at one of their apartments.

Kiss is also a theatrical event for Chicago: the production of a play by celebrated screenwriter Guillermo Calderon. He wrote Sundance winner "Violeta Went to Heaven;" "The Club," a Golden Globe nominee and winner at the Berlin Intl. Film Festival; and "Neruda," another Golden Globe nominee that was also a lauded at the Canne’s Film Festival. His plays are performed across Europe and in New York, including Neva, Diciembre, Speech, Quake, and Escuela.

The play Kiss opens as the good looking Youssif (Salar Ardebili) half of one couple, arrives at the apartment of comely Hadeel (Arti Ishak), the girl from the other couple. The two engage in friendly banter, mostly play-acting lines from the show. After awhile, though, the banter begins shifting to role playing scenes from the soap opera, and the tone gets more seriously heated and amorous, in an over-the-top melodramatic style.

Like the TV shows, Kiss loaded with thwarted passion and impossible liaisons. That familiar soap opera-style music loudly punctuates the scene, as the soap opera jumps from screen to real life. In a real soap opera, the music is intended to conjure tension, or suspense. But here, it conjures up laughs from the audience – who were wildly amused by the overheated performances.

The characters struggle for words – they know the passion, but they don’t have a script. We hear clumsy lines like, “The heart is a big muscle, and yours is larger than normal,” and “You can love two women at a time,” or “I want to watch you eat and then lick your plate when you are finished.”

The role playing seems to be seriously leading to the real thing, and Youssif and Hadeel get there rather quickly: declarations of undying love lead to a proposal of marriage by Youssif, and Hadeel accepts. Then true to form for a soap opera, there is a knock at the door, and Hadeel’s beau, the hapless Ahmed (Monty Cole, who also directs) arrives, determined to propose to Hadeel himself.

Ahmed does, and Hadeel accepts. And so it goes, with complications rising as Youssif’s girlfriend Bana (Cassidy Slaughter-Mason) arrives, angry because she senses Youssif has been untrue. This meta-soap opera grinds on comically, until the action ends, and the actors take a bow. The playwright has drawn us close with this show.

And with us in his clutches, Calderon resumes the play with a faked post show discussion by the cast, and we are lead to another plane of performance that is mind-bending, to say the least. I won’t spoil the last 20 percent of the show, but to see where the mind of Guillermo Calderon takes us under the direction of Monty Cole – it’s well, well worth seeing. Likewise the performances by Ardebili and Ishak are excellent. 

Kiss is also a social commentary. The characters names and the Arabic script on the televised soap opera playing on the set let us know it is set in the Middle East. Information in the lobby reveals it is Syria, where soap operas are celebrated form of cultural expression. They are censored, in that criticism of the government isn’t permitted.

But Syrian actors and scriptwriters insert social commentary subversively. In the lobby you can also learn a bit of famous Syrian actress Mai Skaf, who died in exile two years ago, following harassment for political dissidence. If there is a Jeff Award for dramaturgy, the researchers who brings such scripts as Kiss (and also Pomona) to Chicago are certainly deserving of it. Kiss runs through August 18 at Den Theatre.