No sex, please...

'No other country has sent the vice squad in, or shown so much interest. Our show is shocking, yes, but it's not sensationalist.' So says Valentina Carrasco, the co-artistic director of La Fura del Baus, a Spanish circus/theatre troupe who've been touring their X-rated show XXX across Europe without so much as a batting of the eyelid by the local gendarme.

In England, however, it's a different story: for a while it was uncertain XXX would be performed here at all. Having already seen a video, the vice squad are also determined to attend performances when it comes to the Riverside.

La Fura's XXX is an explicit show about sex. Based loosely on the Marquis de Sade's Philosophy Of The Bedroom, it traces a young girl's initiation into the furthest reaches of sexual behaviour by three DIY pornographers.

The simulated initiation is filmed and then projected on stage and intercut with shots from genuine, hardcore pornographic videos, including threesomes, foursomes, anal sex and S and M, while the show ends with the simulated rape and mutilation of the girl's mother. In short, it sounds like one of the most disturbing pieces of theatre to have made the British stage.

La Fura are quick to point out that they never intended to provide a comfortable evening's entertainment and that with XXX, they mean to shock and provoke. For Pablo Gomez, one of the performers in the piece, that means forcing the audience to confront their own fantasies, and to liberate themselves, as he puts it, from the conventions of a Christian upbringing. 'We think we've come so far in our sexual attitudes, but there are still many fears about normal sexual behaviour.'

Carrasco goes further, pointing towards the hypocrisy and prejudices surrounding pornography in particular. 'Pornography is a thriving industry,' she says. 'Yet we hide it away. It would be much more healthy if it were out in the open.'

Well, yes, but it's one thing to acknowledge we live in a permissive society and quite another to flaunt the transgression of accepted moral values. La Fura don't pretend that XXX has a moral message; rather they would prefer that the audience reflect on that for themselves. 'Of course we are not saying that everything pornographic is good,' says Carrasco. 'We are simply putting on stage what already exists in people's minds and in real life.'

So how does XXX differ from actual hardcore? 'Pornography is a commodity: people consume it for sexual pleasure,' Carrasco points out. 'XXX is not about pleasure, it's about provocation. By mixing real footage with simulation we want to accentuate the differences between what is real and what is not.'

La Fura may talk about the importance of provoking debate, but no one is pretending that XXX is a cerebral piece of theatre. Rather it's something that goes straight for the gut: it's about feeling first, and thinking later.

It is this emphasis, perhaps, that has enabled the show's really unique element - the participation of the audience, who are invited to text their own fantasies, which are then projected on to the screen at the back.