At one level, Alana Valentine’s new play is a timely piece, given the newly recharged debate on nuclear power in Australia. It also dwells on a more timeless question: whether it is possible for two people, implacably opposed in their world view, to feel love for one another.

Based on interviews distilled into fictional characters, Nucleus is focused on a veteran pro-nuclear engineer, Gabriel (Peter Kowitz), and his nemesis Cassie (Paula Arundell), a doctor who has deeply researched the effects of radiation on the human body and who has, over the years, gone to some extraordinary lengths to short-circuit Gabriel’s advocacy.

Peter Kowitz and Paula Arundell in Nucleus. Photo © Brett Boardman

Theirs is a rivalry that goes back decades, to the late sixties and the Commonwealth government’s plan to build a nuclear reactor and power station at Jervis Bay, south of Sydney. That plan came to nothing, Gabriel ruefully explains in a lengthy introductory lecture, but that doesn’t mean the idea is dead in the water for Gabriel, who has remained a vocal proponent for nuclear ever since.

Cassie, meanwhile, has shadowed him at every turn,...