Cross your heart and promise to get yourself out to see Dave Deveau’s My Funny Valentine at the Firehall Arts Centre, where the Zee Zee Theatre production is playing from next Wednesday (February 20)to March 2. The script, which premiered in 2011, explores a real-life homophobic murder. In Oxnard, California, in 2008, 15-year-old Lawrence King asked another boy from his school to be his Valentine. The next day, that boy, who was barely 14, shot King in the head twice. King died on Valentine’s Day. Wisely, Deveau doesn’t lean into the sensational aspects of this story. Instead, he introduces us to figures on the periphery, including Helen, a teacher at the school. One actor plays all of the characters, and, this time out, that actor is Anton Lipovetsky, who won the 2012 Jessie Award for most promising newcomer. Both Deveau’s script and Cameron Mackenzie’s direction are beautifully conceived: unsentimental but compassionate.