By Yasmina Reza. Translated by Christopher Hampton. Directed by Katrina Dunn. Produced by the Unexpected Co-op. At the Jericho Arts Centre until October 21

In this era of market-driven everything, it's good to be reminded that some artists make theatre out of love for the form””for the poetic, emotional, and intellectual complexities that dramatic art can access.

This Equity co-op production of Yasmina Reza's The Unexpected Man is as intelligent as almost anything we're likely to see in Vancouver this season. When I caught it on the second night of its run at the Jericho Arts Centre, there were about 10 people in the audience, but the performers care so much about what they're doing that the small house didn't faze them. I felt like I was watching Yo-Yo Ma playing his cello in a community hall for the sheer bliss of feeling the music. If Vancouver audiences are as smart as I think they are, they're going to start showing up to share the experience.

Reza is famous for her 1994 script, Art. She followed that a year later with The Unexpected Man. In it, a famous author and a woman who loves his books sit in the same compartment on a train that's going from Paris to Frankfurt. They speak their internal thoughts. She's desperate to talk to him. He's so bitter and self-obsessed that he barely notices her existence.

Theatre excels at exploiting the tension between how we behave and how we feel, between what we understand and what we acknowledge; when we go to the theatre we sit in the dark in order to share secrets we already know. The Unexpected Man exploits that dynamic in the context of a potential relationship””in the enormous untapped possibility of intimacy. The woman, whose name is Martha, grasps the author's work to an unusual degree; she knows that his arty obfuscation is a deliberate strategy to avoid being truly understood. Silent on the other side of the compartment, Paul, the author, yearns for just such a reader.

The Unexpected Man is also about the allure of unattractive characters, about neurosis as an expression of vivacity. Martha describes Paul as “flirtatiously anti-social”; she understands that beyond his cynicism lies frustration at his own inadequate attempts to be fully, compassionately human.

As Martha, Christine Willes delivers by far the best performance I've seen in her already impressive career. There's a confidence and stillness here that allow for enormous spiritual size. William S. Taylor also makes beautiful music as Paul. One small observation: greater variety in tone might help him to realize more fully Reza's apparent strategy of illustrating the appeal of the armoured personality. That said, the duet is lovely.

I must also commend the stark expressiveness of Gillian Wolpert's lighting design.

For the love of theatre, go see this show. The ending will move you in ways you won't anticipate.