Love stinks . . . . . . but Lovers and Other Strangers doesn’t BY BILL RODRIGUEZ

It’s the same with love songs — we will never, ever see the last variation on the theme. As long as the sexes are battling like survival of the species depended on it, Lovers and Other Strangers and its ilk will keep being staged.

Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna’s comedy dates from the early ’70s, but there’s not much dated about the troubles at hand in this production at Newport’s Firehouse Theatre.

There are four 10-minute plays followed by a longer one-act, and the situations span the spectrum: an about-to-be husband getting cold feet, the aftermath of a nightclub pick-up, an "other woman" in tears at being strung along, a married couple wrestling with gender role identity, and a couple of war-torn marriage veterans trying to talk their son and his wife out of divorce.

Packed with broad swipes at familiar foibles, the longer, post-intermission piece has the most laughs. Chuck Reifler and Barbara Finelli are very funny, straight-faced as Frank and Bea. They are the blue-collar parents of Richie (Adam Rosen), who is breaking it to them that he and his wife have decided to divorce. The old-school parents scoff at such considerations as compatibility and happiness. ("You make your bed, you suffer in it" is one of his mother’s truisms, as is "Don’t look for happiness, Richie. It’ll only make you miserable.") Completing the picture is Richie’s wife, Joan. Beth Brooklinn makes her fascinating even when she is mutely aghast at her mother-in-law’s confessions, such as how she always considered sex to be a clench-your-eyes — but loving — wifely duty.

The opening playlet indulges in the broadest caricature, to set the outer limits here. At 2 a.m., Mike (Rich Mercier) is banging on the door of his fiancée Susan (Krista Weller), desperate to find a reason to cancel their looming wedding. (That they have separate apartments is the only major indication that these scenes are 30 years old.) After he finds no rival lovers around, he admits that his big concern is over the forever thing. She has skinny arms, so he’s afraid he couldn’t always be faithful, he admits. "I don’t get nervous when you’re in the room," he says; she’s just not his "dream girl." Susan, meanwhile, just calmly continues painting her toenails. She’s been through this before, we understand.

Next, Jerry (Matthew Archambault) has lured Brenda (Christina Petrone) to his place after she made overtures in a nightclub. Trouble is, she’s intent on maintaining the illusion that this is more than a one-night stand. She’s as eager to have sex but has to rationalize her reasons, too proud to admit that an urge rather than romance brought her there. It’s the mother of all classic sex comedy set-ups, nicely delivered.

Taylor and Bologna are actors and only incidentally playwrights, so they were mainly looking for juicy acting opportunities. The next cliché that they sought to transform into an archetype is that of the bamboozled mistress. Beautiful but too-trusting Cathy (Nancy Abbott) is a blubbering mess in a bathroom. Banging on the door is Hal (Reifler), the short, bald married man who has kept her in limbo for the past five years. The reasons he won’t divorce his wife have kept shifting and have included wanting to wait till his son made Eagle Scout. Now, with the potential of an overdue ultimatum by Cathy hanging in the air, Hal has gone generic, talking about keeping everybody happy. Reifler is wonderfully earnest delivering the very funny quasi-rational rant that details Hal’s generous concern for everybody involved. Such a clever cad, making Cathy the one threatening to topple his happy home.

The gender role confusions of the ’70s did not go to waste. Coming out of it was a very funny scene here, in which a woman trying to seduce her husband finds her independence coming between them in the bed like a fist-on-hips Valkyrie. If the macho ego of Johnny (Seth Abbott) were any frailer, he’d faint. Wife Wilma (Geri Sereno) is in her sexy red nightgown, but he’d rather go to sleep. An antic Abbott explains the source of Johnny’s dissatisfaction: ever since she got a job he hasn’t felt like "the boss," as all men since caveman days have rightly been. And work has been going badly. Sereno gets to deliver to the hapless hubby perhaps the funniest line in the play: "I had no idea that your sex drive was so dependent on your sales volume."

Lovers and Other Strangers demonstrates that love will always be a farce. Firehouse Theatre does a good job of showing us how.