I tried stamp col­lect­ing when I was younger. It end­ed some­what dis­as­trous­ly when I got bored with the gummed hinges used to afix stamps to the album pages and instead switched to PVA glue. My grand­fa­ther would not have been so proud of me.

And it’s anoth­er phi­lat­el­ic pop­pa that’s at the cen­tre of Cir­ca The­atre’s new play Mau­ri­tius. It tells the tale of New York half-sis­ters Jack­ie (Danielle Mason) and Mary (Lyn­dee-Jane Ruther­ford) and the stamp col­lec­tion that belonged to Mary’s grand­fa­ther. And in that stamp col­lec­tion is the extreme­ly rare and extreme­ly valu­able Mau­ri­tius “Post Office” stamps.

The Jack­ie and the stamps come to the atten­tion of charm­ing rogue (and stamp lover) Den­nis (Andrew Fos­ter), who knows a man — the thug­gish Ster­ling (Jef­frey Thomas) — who may be able cut a deal. And then there’s stamp deal­er Philip (Aaron Alexan­der), who’s grown weary of n00bs stum­bling in want­i­ng their rel­a­tives’ col­lec­tions val­ued.

The script tight­ly moves between the five char­ac­ters, unfurl­ing bits of his­to­ry and cre­at­ing new ten­sion with every scene. It feels a bit like a David Mamet flick, where all is not what it seems, and no one can real­ly be trust­ed.

Danielle Mason plays main char­ac­ter Jack­ie like a cross between a young Sarah Jes­si­ca Park­er mixed with a bit of Robin Wright crazy atti­tude, and she man­ages to be a bit of a bitch-arse with­out los­ing the audi­ence’s sym­pa­thy.

Play­wright There­sa Rebeck has writ­ten for Law & Order: Crim­i­nal Intent, and indeed Mau­ri­tius some­times has some of that show’s dark, thrilling pace to it. It’s a sexy, well pro­duced play.

And on a side note, it’s worth men­tion­ing that Cir­ca’s pro­duc­tion of Mau­ri­tius is spon­sored by Chris Fin­layson, oth­er­wise known as the Min­is­ter for Arts, Cul­ture and Her­itage. Nice one.