What a difference a day makes. Barely 24 hours after The Fantastic Follies Of Mrs Rich, another Restoration revival opens and could not be more different. The venue is on the London fringe rather than in a national flagship house; the play is written by a man rather than a woman (William Wycherley, in 1675); the company, Morphic Graffiti, have set it outside its original time period; and above all, it is almost entirely devoid of spark or enjoyment. Not that director Luke Fredericks and his cast don’t try. However, in every competition between their own ideas and Wycherley’s, it’s the poor playwright’s that come a poor second.

There’s great potential in setting a comedy about social expectations and sexual libertinage in the 1920s jazz age. Setting it in a 21^st-century pastiche view of the jazz age, though, does not add a further element to a rich mix, but instead introduces further makings of contradiction, of which there are already more than enough. “I have brought over not so much as a bawdy picture,” announces Mr Horner, newly returned from France... as he turns to the massive Tamara de Lempicka nude painting that dominates his drawing-room. Eddie Eyre gives the most testosterone-rich performance of the evening as Horner... which is unhelpful, since the plot depends on his being perceived by all as impotent so that he can be trusted with his neighbours’ wives. (Daniel Cane as Sparkish is much more camp, and is the principal perpetrator of a disconcerting amount of man-on-man bum-slapping.) To judge by accents, the rakish Horner is an east-end Londoner and Alithea Pinchwife (Siubhan Harrison), the young married woman who is his principal objective, a simple rural wench from Peckham or environs.

Simplifying Stewart Charlesworth’s design in order to cut the choreographed scene changes and preludes would save a good quarter-hour; however, in dispensing with the sourced faux-New Orleans jazz rearrangements of pop numbers ranging from “Careless Whisper” to “Bad Romance”, this would also remove the largest single component of wit and flair in the production. As for the rest, let’s just say that not a single use of the word “come” is allowed to pass without sexual single-entendre. This isn’t enjoyable filth, just a stain.

Written for the Financial Times.