THEATER REVIEW : Friends and Lovers : A husband-and-wife team balances writing and acting talents in two one-act plays about relationships.

A group of recent theater graduates from Occidental College and CalArts, banding to gether in post-campus life under the umbrella of Theatre Cosimosis, are debuting two original one-acts at the Gene Bua Theatre.

The creators deftly describe the two related plays in the theater program as being about “friends who have sex and lovers who do not.”

That says it as well as anything. Unfortunately, only one of the “Laughter and Lust” plays, Aaron M. Rogers’ “Negotiations in Search of Love Songs,” has the ring of truth. The other, Amy Keating’s “Remembering Us,” is, to put it kindly, excruciating.

But because Keating co-stars in Rogers’ promising play and Rogers directs Keating’s bad play, the negative and positive results are at least all in the family (Rogers and Keating are husband and wife).

The well-titled “Negotiations in Search of a Love Song” strikes at a common, identifiable situation that appears dramatically fresh under Rogers’ telling dialogue and Jenni Villegas’ economical direction.

Many of us have been there: a guy and a gal (the believably floundering Christopher Cook and the vibrant Keating) are such good buddies, in one of those great platonic relationships, that sex inevitably rears its nervous head. When the characters do finally and comically hit the sack, the results are not what you might expect.

The grueling experience of Keating’s “Remembering Us” centers on a despairing lesbian relationship. When one of the lovers, whose name is George (Teresa Purvis), is cruelly injured during an operation, she loses her intellectuality and warmth, turning into a babbling child who can’t be trusted to make breakfast for herself.

Watching Purvis pour cornflakes into a bowl of orange juice and generally turn the kitchen into a scene of chaos is totally off-putting, not at all the endearing low comedy apparently intended. The loyal normal lover (the colorlessly drawn Patricia Gatz) alternately speaks in a monologue to the audience, explaining at one point that sex between the two women is out of the question. Her character is guilt-ridden and tough to bring to life, and it’s a non-role compared to her scrambled counterpart.

The one-act’s pat happy ending stretches credulity, and Rogers’ direction has no arc or shape, as if that would make any difference in a play that goes on forever.

Now if Rogers would just stick to writing plays and Keating to acting in them, Theatre Cosimosis might go somewhere.

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: “Laughter and Lust.” Location: Gene Bua Theatre, 3435 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. Hours: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Ends March 5. Price: $12 ($10 for seniors and students). Call: (213) 660-8587.