Project Arts Centre, Dublin Until Dec 22 8.15pm €12- €16 projectartscentre.ie

Let’s talk about sex. When two people love each other very much, and six months later the spark goes out of their relationship, they may be inclined to introduce something new: risk, acrobatic impulse, or, more predictably, another person. It’s common. In fact, in Mark Cantan’s rigorously calibrated new comedy for Rough Magic, it happens 2,834 times a day, a phenomenon as natural as the birds, the bees and another consenting party oblivious to emotional consequence. Then again, it isn’t always easy.

The same can be said about sex comedies, which – The Taming of the Shrew aside – have not always moved the earth for Rough Magic. The difference here is that Cantan knows when to come on strong and when to cool off. “Maybe she just happened to glance at the Three’s Company boxset,” wonders the nervy statistician, who’s go-getter wife liaises, largely by accident, with Jezebel, a ditsy naïf living down her name. Cantan is less interested in the goofy titillation of sitcoms, though, or the obvious embarrassment of farce, than the ludicrous repercussions for three people who can’t be honest with each other.

Emotional truths or profound characterisation play a third wheel to the accelerating ingenuity of the plotting, and both conservatives and liberals should be appeased and appalled at different moments. But everyone is invited to share in their love life. Hey – the more the merrier.

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