If you have ever felt your heart flutter at the sight of your crush or suffered from a heart broken by betrayal, then you have a visceral understanding that emotions are firmly ensconced in the heart. Scientists, however, describe the heart as an organ and say “heartache” is a metaphor for a neurochemical reaction. Nilo Cruz’s allegorical drama now at GALA Hispanic Theatre, Exquisita Agonía, mines both perspectives, prodding the audience to consider which has more weight.

Millie (Luz Nicolás), a flamboyant opera singer, convinces Dr. Castillo (Ariel Texidó) to connect her with the young man who received her deceased husband Lorenzo’s heart. Emboldened by a desire to reconnect with Lorenzo’s spirit through the newly reassigned heart, Millie sends letters to the recipient, Amér (Joel Hernández Lara), in hopes of forging a relationship with him. While Millie’s children, Romy (Catherine Nuñez) and Tommy (Andrés Talero), are hesitant about their mother’s plan given the resentment they still harbor for their father, Amér’s protective older brother, Imanol (José Antonio González), encourages his brother to meet Millie.

Cruz, who both writes and directs this show, and who won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in drama for his play Anna In The Tropics, challenges his characters to reconsider long-held beliefs about love transcending death and whether we are ruled by our mind or our heart. This is no easy task, and there are no easy answers offered in this tightly wound play. From a quick exposition to traumatic revelations that come out of nowhere, the play shocks its audience, but also manages to leave it reflective.

Thanks to Cruz’s attentive direction and Clifton Chadick’s utilitarian stage design, the play moves at a quick pace, growing more dynamic and humorous as it progresses. Nicolás’ skill in balancing Millie’s comic melodrama with unfeigned sincerity syncs with Hernández’s deft portrayal of Amér’s precocious emotional intelligence and charming benevolence. The characters’ monologues underscore Cruz’s poetic ability to explore how we wrestle with mortality and reimagine the past.

Texido’s understated performance as Dr. Castillo conveys the tensions between being driven by rationality or emotions. Enamored of Millie, Dr. Castillo has an incentive to dissuade her from believing that Lorenzo lives on in Amér, but can’t help admit that, in the midst of a mid-life crisis, he is trying to “unlearn everything” he was taught in medical school “because each heart has its own biography and ways of revealing its story.”

Exquisita Agonía hits plenty of minor but moving notes like these, exploring how emotions and suffering are passed on through the cellular memories embedded in the heart.

Exquisita Agonía runs at GALA Hispanic Theatre through March 1. Tickets $30-$48. Runtime approximately two hours with one intermission. In Spanish with English surtitles.