This is a love triangle that has all the angles covered. In DV8's The Happiest Day Of My Life the three main players (two men, one woman), toy with each other on a first-come, first-served basis. Whether that is a case of not knowing which way to turn or being spoilt for choice depends on how handy you are at sorting out your love from your lust. It is a horny dilemma that forms the central thrust of director Lloyd Newson's restless foray into the emotional undertows of modern life.
Romance and sex, freedom and responsibility, truth and deceit - especially self-deception - all do battle as the performers roll and tumble off beds and settees and the stage floods with drugged-up party scenes, hysterical wedding days and the drowning feeling of life's joys being submerged under a tidal wave of social conventions.
As all manner of stuff gets strutted to Shaggy's Mr Boombastic and KLF's What Time Is Love? you feel like a gatecrasher at a party where the revellers are putting off the inevitable and behaving badly while they still can. Sure enough, after the interval the floor of Bob Bailey's elaborate set comes up to reveal a living room surrounded by its very own canal. This is the creeping isolation of coupledom given all too physical form.
From that point on the characters need a line, because they are sinking fast. Despite the fact that Rob has been making goo-goo eyes at Gabriel, he has tied the knot with Kate - who is not convinced she wouldn't have been better off with Gabriel herself. As a scenario it is not unfamiliar (are we really meant to buy the idea that Loaded laddishness is repressed gay yearning?) but DV8 attack it with an energy and commitment (and some impressive swimming), which makes for a compelling spectacle with its own take on the perplexing state of modern desire.
What it lacks is a central performance of sufficient magnetism to keep the passion afloat. Muscle-pumped Robert Tannion does a fine line in feral/cocky strutting, whipping his top off for a perfectly-formed pose at every opportunity. But when this hunter gets captured by the game, he fails to elicit any sympathy as his feckless philandering leaves him emotionally beached. Far from relating to his cocked-up sexuality, we simply end up despising his inability to commit.
This is frustrating, because there is a desire churning away in The Happiest Day Of My Life to wade deep into the mystery of love's elusive splendours. But somehow we never quite make it out of the shallow end.
At Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1 (0171-960 4242), until September 25
