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.