In his dozen witty, sometimes grim, plays the Canadian Brad Fraser has shown himself a shrewd and unillusioned chronicler of modern love. The Royal Exchange has been foremost in bringing his plays to us, and this latest is a world premiere. The swift, crisp dialogue is as exhilarating as ever; pain is here, bewilderment and laughter; and while four of the characters are absorbed by the tug of love and/or sex, the fifth can’t find it in himself to feel it.

Kane and Carolyn are the parents of Royce, still at school, and Madison, resisting university. When she goes for a job as a waitress she is turned down because the restaurant’s owner, David, was once the lover of her father before, and briefly after, Kane and Carolyn married. Piece by piece the past is brought into the present. The son is nauseated, the daughter intrigued — so much so that she embarks on a relationship with the man who had sex with her father.

If marriage, as the wife says, takes work, so, comes the reply, does denial. And while there may be times when lying seems the wiser choice, perhaps in later times that decision should be challenged.

In Braham Murray’s superb production the action oscillates between two halves of the stage, one the family kitchen, the other the restaurant. Both impeccable. Numerous meals are begun; none are finished because something is said, done or remembered, and somebody stamps out. Or stamps in, wielding a rifle.

Superb performances too, in roles that breed comedy out of confusion. In Jonny Phillips’s languid drawl as David, you can detect the throb of discontent. The changing expressions on the faces of Teresa Banham’s Carolyn and John Kirk’s Kane trace their hesitant moves to alter their future, she to find the new, he to advance to the old. And the sizzling Madison of Amy Beth Hayes and Oliver Gomm’s haunted Royce are thrilling studies of teenagers flung about by their world’s call for sex, sex and sex.

Box office: 0161-833 9833, to Feb 21

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