Don’t expect to come out of this production with your faith (or otherwise) in a Higher Power shifted one way or the other. But you can be reasonably sure that you will emerge in some way moved.

Anthony Gooley and Elijah Williams in A Case for the Existence of God. Photo © Phil Erbacher

Samuel D. Hunter’s single set play opens in an office cubicle in Twin Falls, Idaho, where two men have come together to talk over a mortgage.

The hopeful applicant is Ryan (played by Anthony Gooley), the recently separated dad of a toddler daughter. He’s hoping to buy a remnant of the land on which his forebears once built a homestead. Eventually, Ryan wants to do likewise, but this is about more than real estate and family sentiment. Without a place to call his own, he believes, he’ll be spun off into the void.

Mortgage broker Keith (Elijah Williams) is keen to do his best for his client. It won’t be easy, however; Ryan has a lousy credit history, a poorly paid job in a yoghurt factory, no assets and his grasp on the workings of the home loan market are tenuous at best.

As the men talk, an uneasy connection develops, in part inspired by their recent fatherhoods and their predicaments. “I think we share a specific kind of sadness,” says Ryan.

That comes as news to Keith (black, gay and holding a degree in Early Music), who is initially dumbfounded by Ryan’s clumsy-seeming attempt to reach out. But as this gently piercing exploration of manhood unfolds, the nature of their shared sadness becomes apparent. Chalk and cheese they might be, but Ryan’s fight for a loan and Keith’s campaign for the custody of his foster child are each an attempt to secure some sense of belonging in the world. Without it, they are destined for invisibility, immateriality: Ryan the trailer park loser; Keith the pitiable smalltown queer.

Anthony Gooley and Elijah Williams in A Case for the Existence of God. Photo © Phil Erbacher

This Sydney premiere is presented by Outhouse Theatre Co., a company with an excellent record in staging contemporary American theatre in Sydney (Will Arbury’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning; Annie Baker’s John and The Flick). This is a worthy add to its repertoire, a nuanced and expertly calibrated production that hooks you from the get-go and slowly reels you close (despite, on opening night, an unplanned 30-minute interval resulting from an audience member experiencing illness).

Directed by Craig Baldwin, Gooley (Venus & Adonis) and Williams (On the Beach) are well-matched and illuminate their characters from within. Whether speaking or silently pondering their characters’ next move, both are fully immersed in their work.

The set design (Veronique Benett) isolates the men on a small island of drab office furniture until late in the piece when everything comes apart in a bold temporal leap that reminded me of David Lowery’s film A Ghost Story. The transition is a touch awkward in terms of staging but imaginatively thrilling nonetheless. A Case for the Existence of God explodes from its setting to encompass centuries – from the time of Ryan’s ill-fated ancestors to a point in the future only their children will see.

A Case for the Existence of God plays at the Seymour Centre until 4 May.