Longtime housemates Amaliah and Kaveh are a couple in some ways, not so much in others. She’s a Pakistan-born singer and actor trying to extend her residency in Australia. He’s a gay Kabul-born doctor, now an Australian citizen.

Antony Makhlouf and Almitra Mavalvala in For the Love of Paper. Photo © LSH Media

With a possible deportation, looming, they decide to suppress their ethical concerns, ignore suggestions from parents in their countries of birth (where Kaveh, understandably, has yet to come out) and enter the bureaucratic maze as a couple in the hope that Amaliah can also gain citizenship.

Can their friendship – which is a deep one – survive the inevitable bureaucratic hurdles and interrogations they will face?

Written by Sydney-based, Persian-Pakistani Almitra Mavalvala (who plays Amaliah), For the Love of Paper unfolds in engaging style with flashes of humour and palpable warmth, but this production has some rookie issues. Director Kersherka Sivakumaran’s pacing is uncertain and occasionally haphazard, and the show’s 90 minutes of stage time could easily be reined in with more attention to transitions and cues.

For some in the audience, scenes set on the couch are blocked by a large easel set up alongside it. The domestic set – with kitchen, dining room, lounge spaces and a piano all squeezed on to the compact KXT traverse – is something of an obstacle course for the cast to navigate and contributes to the show’s halting rhythm.

That said, Mavalvala, Antony Makhlouf (the most experienced actor in the cast) and Joseph Raboy, who plays some broadly sketched walk-in roles, are gel reasonably well and the play, though imperfectly staged, is rewarding.

For the Love of Paper plays at KXT on Broadway, Sydney, until 20 April.