Kelsey Angel Baehrens, left, who plays teacher Sara, and Emjoy Gavino, who plays traffic reporter Callie, share a get-to-know-you moment in a scene from Theater Mu's production of Diana Son's 1998 play "Stop Kiss." (RICHRYAN)

How relevant is a 1998 play to today’s fraught political environment?

As she welcomed patrons to Saturday’s opening night performance of “Stop Kiss,” Theater Mu managing director Anh Thu T. Pham acknowledged the shootings of Minnesota lawmakers Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman and their spouses, sending up good thoughts for their families and our unsettled community.

A similar shock and pall also permeated Diana Son’s one-act drama about two women who are attacked after their first kiss in a New York park, with one of them ending up in a coma.

In director Katie Bradley’s nuanced and well-acted production, we get a lot more than their violent victimization. Emjoy Gavino and Kelsey Angel Baehrens sketch their characters Callie and Sara with wit and idiosyncratic vitality. In fact, the pair performed with such winning humanity and sweet light that we cannot help but root for their love.

The action starts with Callie bouncing around her big, messy New York apartment. She’s cleaning up and having her own private karaoke, dancing to the Emotions’ “Best of My Love” when the doorbell rings.

Callie buzzes in Sara, who has recently moved from St. Louis. The newcomer has a pet carrier with an unseen cat that she’s boarding with Callie. That feline, shy and mysterious, becomes a catalyst, a portal and, ultimately, an avatar of curiosity and exploration for the two women, both of whom have only ever been in relationships with men.

James Rodriguez as Detective Cole questions Emjoy Gavino (Callie) in a scene from Diana Son's "Stop Kiss." (RICHRYAN)

Son structures her well-crafted and quirkily observed play like two trains on a collision course. One narrative line chronicles how Callie, who moved to New York 20 years ago to attend school and is now a traffic reporter zipping around the city in a gridlock-seeking helicopter, and Sara, a third-grade teacher on a two-year fellowship in the Bronx, get to know each other.

Those scenes are suffused with meet-cute charm and lead to the requisite blow-up argument that either cements a budding relationship or ends it.

The other narrative line starts with the police inquiry as Detective Cole (James Rodriguez with cool authority) investigates the attack. His questions are ostensibly about solving the crime, but they also help Callie, Sara and witness Mrs. Winsley (former Mu artistic director Lily Tung Crystal in a pointed and potent return) get to truths about their relationships and themselves.

Directing on Erik Paulson’s largely static set that’s changed through Karin Olson’s variable lighting, Katharine Horowitz’s horror-flick suggestive sound design and 14 suspended screens, Bradley elicits palpable performances from her acting ensemble.

From left, Moses Ekel, Emjoy Gavino and Kelsey Angel Baehrens perform in a key scene in Theater Mu's "Stop Kiss." (RICHRYAN)

Gavino, who previously was in “The Mousetrap” and “A Christmas Carol” at the Guthrie Theater, is lyrical and entrancing as Callie. She finds both her smart, happy-go-lucky charisma and aching soul.

She is well-matched with Baehrens, one of the Kim Loo vaudeville sisters in History Theatre’s “Blended 和 (Harmony).” Baehrens has the widest physical arc of all the characters, and she delivers with excellence.

One of the tenderest moments in the show is also one of its most memorable. It’s when wheelchair-bound Sara starts to recover from the injuries that put her in a coma, and is learning to move her limbs again. Callie helps her friend put on her clothes. Patient and kind, Callie slowly and carefully guides Sara, hand by tremulous hand and feet by shaky feet, into her clothes.

Acted with detail and skill, the scene is moving enough to draw tears. And it offers a capstone metaphor for a show suffused with care and warmth in the face of incomprehensible hate and horror.