Entertainment

Spouse-swapping comedy ‘It’s Just Sex’ fails to score

‘Swapping is the new cheating,” declares one of the partner-swapping marrieds in Jeff Gould’s play.

Perhaps, but one thing’s for certain: “It’s Just Sex” is the same old sex comedy.

Swapping spouses isn’t exactly a fresh subject: “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” dealt with it more than 40 years ago, when the sexual revolution was in full swing. Gould’s play, a long-running hit in Los Angeles — feel free to insert LA dig here — adds little to the theme except to suggest that mixing things up might be just the thing for failing marriages.

It’s clear from the beginning that at least two of the show’s 40-ish couples are in trouble. The opening scene features Joan (Jackie Debatin) coming home unexpectedly to find her husband, Phil (Matt Walton), fooling around with a prostitute (Molly Fahey).

“She’s just a hooker,” he whines.

“Not everyone can be president,” she responds.

Greg (Michael Colby Jones) and Lisa (Elaine Hendrix) find that their marriage is floundering because of his inability to perform. “If you’d just watch the DVDs I bought you,” she says in frustration.

Their opposite numbers are Carl (Salvator Xuereb) and Kelly (Gina LaPiana), who still can’t keep their hands off each other. But he’s well aware of her attraction to Phil, which she hardly bothers to deny.

When the three couples get together for a cocktail party, it leads at first to a truth-telling drinking game, and then to hanky-panky, discreetly conveyed via shadows.

“I guess we’re first,” says Carl to Lisa when returning from their rendezvous. “How embarrassing for me.”

Needless to say, all of this leads to the couples seriously reassessing their relationships, the results of which play out like one long group-therapy session.

Under the fast-paced direction of Rick Shaw (apparently his real name), the ensemble — especially Xuereb’s entertainingly horndog Carl — puts over their zingers in expert comedic fashion.

But in the era of Craigslist and Web sites like ashleymadison.com (“Life is short, have an affair”), the PG-13 “It’s Just Sex” merely comes across as quaintly, even ironically, old-fashioned.