One round too many

The simmering decadence of fin-de-siécle Vienna may have inspired Arthur Schnitzler's infamous work about a daisychain of sexual liaisons, yet more than 80 years after its first scandalous staging, La Ronde continues to inspire updates ranging from the wittily insolent to the puzzlingly futile. David Hare's The Blue Room infamously launched Nicole Kidman's British stage career and the critical term "theatrical Viagra", New Yorker Michael John LaChiusa introduced gay scenes and songs to his urbane, decade-hopping Hello Again, and only this week, Carlo Gebler's Ten Rounds added Northern Ireland politics to the formula of lingering sexual dynamite.

Now playwright Sarah Phelps flings a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am variation into the eternally circling ring, which starts with an encounter between a groom and a bridesmaid in a hotel room. Loud, proud, and relentlessly confrontational, it dedicates itself admirably to displaying women as the least sentimental sex, yet fails to achieve much beyond the odd one-liner that would shrivel any male ego at 20 paces.

Soutra Gilmour's formulaic design allows the different lovers to oscillate between a double bed, a sofa, a couple of bar stools and a kitchen. Nicola Walker and Justin Salinger play each of the maladjusted couples in a 21st century world where forbidden sex seems to be passè, so that in a marked departure from Schnitzler, the tension lies in a humorous redefinition of gender roles, where women's sexual appetites are voraciously dominant.

I should probably confess here to being in the same year as Phelps at university, where she was a fiercely articulate, stridently intelligent presence. It is therefore highly disappointing that this seems to be a squandered opportunity to play with the different shades of male and female sexuality, especially in a climate where Anthony Neilson's porn-fuelled Stitching is showing at The Bush how far more fundamental questions can be asked about heterosexual relationships.

Despite such problems, Walker proves a winning comic actress and Salinger does a good line in her emasculated masculine counterparts. Strangely, it is when Phelps touches on the subject of cancer that the true potential of her writing explodes into view: and the humour rises from the cheaply confrontational to the darkly revelatory.

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