STAGE REVIEW : Riding Out Relationships : Whitefire Theatre’s ‘Key Exchange’ rings with refreshing, timely truths about commitments.

“Key Exchange,” at the Whitefire Theatre, is about shaky relationships in the Me-Too Decade, but appears more pertinent today than when the play premiered in 1981.

Kevin Wade’s comedy, unfolding in short scenes and centered on the romantic travails of three Sunday afternoon recreational bikers in New York’s Central Park, appears more refreshing and even timelier now because it works so well as a liberating urban coda to the ubiquitous “family values” issue.

Two of the characters (played by Patrick Dean and the single-monikered Kirby) are into an open-ended relationship, but their loose-lifestyle commitments are killing them inside. The third character (Michael Andrew Kelly, a Woody Harrelson look-alike) is happily monogamous. In fact, just married, he would be on his honeymoon except that he and his bride have already lived together for a year and a half.

We follow this threesome over the course of nine consecutive Sunday afternoons that, like weekly thermometer readings, chart the trio’s erratic feelings toward sex, marriage and lovers sharing apartment keys, as in “key exchange.”

The play’s production design by Joe Mann--a leafy spot in the park--is charmingly simple as the characters wheel onto the stage and tumble off their sleek racing bikes dressed in such serious biking garb you’d think they were racing at Le Mans. This sense of place is unobtrusively created by Guido Girardi’s sun-dappled lighting and Robbie Northrine’s backdrop of looming Gotham skyscrapers.

Smartly reduced from a two-act play to an intermission-free 90 minutes, the production is deftly directed by Richard Scelfo, who draws attractive, multilayered performances from all three co-stars: big, loopy, amiable Kelly; tense, fearful, machismo-scarred Dean, and passionate, svelte Kirby, playing a loving girlfriend who gives more than she gets until her pot boileth over.

In lesser hands, all these characters would be rather stereotypical. But the acting, particularly by the men, who are the major characters and have the best lines, is what makes this revival sparkle.

Kelly’s momentary crying jag, prompted by marital betrayal, is a delicate, dangerous piece of acting carefully shaded on the side of drama, not comedy. And Dean’s silent despair when his lover rides off on her bike, leaving him with the dreaded words “We’ll see,” is genuinely touching--as authentic as it gets in the breakup department.

Where and When

What: “Key Exchange.”

Where: Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks.

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 11.

Price: $5 to $10.

Call: (818) 708-0960.