You can't open a paper or switch on the TV without finding a discussion of whether you are getting enough, often enough, with sufficient or appropriate partners.

Now it's drawing crowds to the Devonshire Theatre.

"Let's do it on the bench," suggests the girl in the first of the ten erotic encounters that make up this play.

"Why can't we do it tonight?" whines the man in the second. And so "it" goes on. Almost, one has to say, to a point approaching tedium.

That wasn't, of course, the primary intention of Arthur Schnitzler's original work - from which David Hare's The Blue Room is freely adapted.

Schnitzler had a social imperative that located his sexual daisychain very clearly in the decadent and morbid world of 1897 Vienna.

Hare's reworking suffers from having no social solidity against which to judge these episodes of need and exploitation.

They exist in a contemporary moral vacuum that makes them, for all the jokes - and there are many - bleakly pointless.

As Shakespeare had it: "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action."

But, for all that, The Blue Room comes in a trail of great hype.

How would Tracy Shaw compare with the famous Nicole Kidman Donmar Warehouse production? What is all this nudity about? Will I be embarrassed, titillated or angered?

In fact, Tracy Shaw makes no attempt to emulate the Hollywood diva. Hers is a more fragile portrait.

There are losses with the expansiveness of her older and more self-confident characters but gains with those who are more naive and vulnerable.

The nudity is hardly likely to upset anybody except those who question its repeated necessity. The light tone, the gags and the pervasive cynicism are like bromide to any prospect of arousal.

Jason Connery plays the five male roles with mixed results.

His Scottish politician with hints of his dad's enviable brogue works well. His Edward Fox-style, mannered aristocrat doesn't.

The intriguing set is dressed with love but, overall, the story of The Emperor's New Clothes springs to mind.

For tickets, call 01323 412000.

Review by David Wilkins, features@theargus.co.uk