Edinburgh 2013: Threeway - An enjoyable romp

Threeway at the Pleasance Courtyard

Threeway is the latest from the up-and-coming Scottish playwright DC Jackson, who had a hit at the Fringe in 2010 with My Romantic History, a wisecracking office anti-romcom. There's another amorously challenged couple at the heart of the new play but this time Jackson throws in a third man, with most unexpected consequences.

Julie and Andrew are a young Glaswegian couple who decide to spice things up by inviting a stranger, Mark, into their bed. Self-styled  "pansexual adventurers", the novices get more than they bargained for when they wake up the next morning not just in a tangle of limbs but also inside one another's skin. It's a threeway body swap whereby Julie is trapped inside Mark's body, Mark is trapped is Andrew's and Andrew is trapped in Julie's.

Confusing? Initially, yes, but thanks to some laser-precision directing from Phillip Breen it soon settles down with the relationship between Julie (Gabriel Quigley) and Andrew (Brian Ferguson) particularly convincing as they come to terms with the real truths behind the fantasy.

As the old saying goes, you never truly know a man until you've walked a mile in their shoes, or, in this case, spent a fortnight in their underpants. Jackson's script is fiendish and filthy and wrestles with all manner of taboos - sexual, racial, social - as the trio take on one another's appearance, jobs and even conjugal rites. There are a lot of ideas for a rather silly plot to bear and Jackson doesn't quite manage to keep all of his balls in the air. An enjoyable romp, nonetheless. 

To 26 August (0131 556 6550)