This production features impressive acting and tight direction, but Sarah Phelps' play, while undeniably witty and amusing, is unfortunately slight. Phelps dissects relationships and sex in an admirably and hilariously frank way, but the play is ultimately yet another variant on La Ronde and doesn't seem to have anything new to add to that classic format.
The roundelay begins in a hotel bedroom during a wedding reception, where old girlfriend Frances (Robyn Cohen) is alternately lashing into and attempting to seduce the just-married groom, Owen (Johnny Clark). She's angry and miserable that he'll no longer be with her, and she is willing to do whatever she can to destroy the newly forged bonds of matrimony. The story proceeds to examine Frances and Owen with other lovers and then extends out to their lovers with other partners, finally returning to that reception hotel room, where things come to a fateful conclusion.
Cohen and Clark are terrific performers, and they tackle the challenge of multiple characters and scenarios with dazzling energy and style. Cohen is deft and very funny as a series of women who are trying to be sexually liberated but are saddled with male partners who can't quite keep up with the concept, whether she's delivering a vitriolic torrent of abuse at an ex-lover's bride or mimicking that same bride's supposedly very proper, trilling orgasm. Clark is very good at portraying the subtleties in this group of swains, but he outdoes himself as businessman Skinner, whose overemphatic attempt at seduction is a jewel of performance and writing that feels like Mamet on a good day. Ross Kramer's direction has honed every aspect of the production to a fineness, excepting one: The costume changes between scenes are needlessly long. Sometimes lasting up to two minutes-I timed them, which says something-they slow the show down regularly. Complete costume changes aren't necessary, particularly with actors as talented as this.