Put the credit card away. Close down Amazon. Get out of line at Walmart. Let the leftover turkey sit for another night.

Grab your coat, get your hat and hurry down your doorstep to Milwaukee Chamber Theatre to see "Love Stories," the production that opened a lengthy run Friday night at the Broadway Theatre Center.

This is the perfect play for anyone who’s in love, anyone who ever was in love or anyone who hopes to be in love someday. That pretty much covers everyone.

This production is three short plays about love by George Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht and Dorothy Parker. And the two characters in each are played by Jim Pickering and Tami Workentin, a real life married couple. The entire thing is directed by the marvelously talented and creative Paula Suozzi, who also directed the play at Madison’s Forward Theatre Company in 2012.

Suozzi has structured the performance as a rehearsal with Pickering and Workentin dropping into their real selves before becoming the actors in a play. It is marvelously realistic, and if anyone wants to know what a real rehearsal is like, this is a must see.

The first play, "Village Wooing," opens on a cruise ship with two lounge chairs. Pickering plays A, a brusque and intense writer of the Marco Polo guidebook series, a job that clearly dampens his poet’s heart. Workentin is Z, a wide open shopgirl who has taken all her money for this trip around the world.

She wants to talk. He wants to write. She is full of life. He seems half dead. The story then moves to her shop on an English moor. He arrives to order several items and doesn’t seem to recognize Z as the woman who bedeviled him on the ship.

But she recognizes him and recognizes, as well, the longing in her heart, a longing that she is sure he can fill. To him, the whole thing seems absurd, and after some brief dalliance, he ends up buying the shop and raising Z’s pay. And yet, he treats her like a slave.

She is determined, though, and with typical clever Shaw dialogue, she wears him down until he lets the poet out and they join together to live happily ever after.

After intermission, we are hit with "The Jewish Wife" by Brecht, a tale of about love of far different sort.

It’s Germany at the start of the rise of Adolf Hitler. Judith is a Jewish wife to Fritz, an Aryan scientist. She has decided to leave Germany because she sees the storm coming and is fearful that her religion may cause problems for her husband.

Almost all of the play is Judith calling family and friends to announce that she is leaving. She doesn’t say why, but Workentin makes sure that the message is clear. She’ll be gone for a long time that may well stretch into forever.

Perhaps there is no greater love than giving up one’s own life to preserve the life of the person you love. And that is what Judith is doing, even though she won’t admit it to her friends, her family or to Fritz who arrives at the end of the play. He is both unable and unwilling to persuade his wife to stay and easily gives in to the stench being created by the Nazis.

The final play of the night is "Here We Are," the creation of Parker who was noted for her wit and her sharp eye for human foible.

Here is where the genius of Suozzi’s direction is profound. After the first two plays, the stage manager calls it quits for the day and dismisses Pickering and Workentin.

But Pickering wants to run lines because he is unsure of them, so he and Workentin sit on a couple of empty stage blocks and go through the play.

The play is set in a Pullman car in the 1930s. A young couple is starting their honeymoon on the ride to New York where they will stay in the famed Biltmore Hotel.

And like the actors themselves, the couple is unsure of themselves and of marriage. They are both inexperienced, and the nerves and tension of the wedding night create a catalog of misunderstanding that has plagued each of us. They drift apart, get back together, drift again and reunite again. It’s a dance that grows ever more frantic until they realize that love does, indeed, conquer all, and the night ends with a kiss.

There is something awe-inspiring about watching true professionals at the top of their game, and that’s what happens here. People will say that it’s because they are married that Pickering and Workentin have such chemistry together. But that would give lie to the quality of their skills and their depth of experience.

These two actors, both having danced with middle-age, play a pair of young newlyweds with an amazing enthusiasm and delight that you forget Pickering’s bald pate. He is a 23-year-old man with a 22-year-old babe for a wife.

This is the season for giving and for thanks. You can get both by saying thank you to Milwaukee Chamber Theatre, and you can give a gift by taking someone you love to see "Love Stories."

"Love Stories" runs through Dec. 20 and information on tickets and showtimes is available here.

Production Credits: Director, Paula Suozzi; Stage Manager, Brandy Kline; Scenic Designer, R. H. Graham; Costume Designer, Ellen Kozak; Lighting Designer, Holly Blomquist; Properties Master, Melissa Centgraf; Sound Designer, Lucas Clopton.