STAGE REVIEW : Sex Keeps Ayckbourn’s ‘Bedroom Farce’ Hopping : Americans may not get all the British social satire, but the romantic entanglements are certainly universal.

The Laguna Playhouse is offering a gently enjoyable production of Alan Ayckbourn’s “Bedroom Farce,” a very British comedy about married people. Ayckbourn is the theatrical muse of middle-class suburban England, and judging by the tremendous popularity he enjoys in his native land, one assumes that his comic barbs hit bull’s-eyes there.

American audiences, however, are not going to get the social satire, unless they are Anglophiles or die-hard devotees of the BBC. A production here has to find a cross-cultural avenue of humor; in the Laguna production, some of the roads are open.

The story concerns four couples whose lives are socially and romantically intertwined. Ernest and Delia, a mature, stolid duo, are celebrating their wedding anniversary while across town Malcolm and Kate, a pair of newlyweds, are having a house-warming party. Among the invitees are Ernest and Delia’s son Trevor; Trevor’s wife, Susannah; Jan, an old flame of Trevor’s, and Jan’s husband Nick.

Each couple is involved in its own intimate tug-of-war. Ernest and Delia, in their routinized, conservative way, are trying to make a night of it. Malcolm and Kate, in a libidinous frenzy, try to outdo each other with juvenile love-pranks. Nick, immobilized with a bad back, howls helplessly from the bed as Jan dresses up to go out without him. And Trevor and Susannah are having “marital difficulties”--the loud, passionate kind--which eventually involve everyone in a long, sleepless night of bedroom-hopping.

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Director Robert Robinson is aiming for the heart of the play but, like most farces, the vital center of “Bedroom Farce” lies, anatomically speaking, a little lower. And only so long as sex is in the driver’s seat does the show speed along like a native Californian.

Denise Poirier absolutely burns rubber with her smiling yet anguished portrayal of neurotic, love-starved Susannah. She slips along the comedy like someone who stepped on a bar of soap at the top of a wet slide. She has all of Susannah’s vital centers firing, with the trigger stuck. The other performances seem off-target to varying degrees, roughly correlative to how far their motivational force has strayed from the pelvic area, but Lynette Wood-Braunstein, as Kate, does a brief bed-top squirm that expresses frustrated passion to a comic T.

The three side-by-side bedrooms designed by Robert L. Smith aptly reflect the characters of their inhabitants, as do the costumes by Juan Lopez, who has struck gold with Susannah’s horribly chic, stiff-skirted cocktail dress.

The orchestrated versions of Beatles songs in David Edwards’ sound design are an inspired choice, opening a door to something English but familiar. There’s rock ‘n’ roll lurking behind those Mantovani arrangements, and rock ‘n’ roll comes from the right part of the anatomy for a bedroom farce.

‘Bedroom Farce’

A Laguna Playhouse production of the play by Alan Ayckbourn, directed by Robert Robinson. With Mark Ciglar, Debbie Grattan, Denise Poirier, Daemeon Pratt, Tom Shelton, Rod Squires, Joanne Underwood and Lynette Wood-Braunstein. Set design by Robert L. Smith. Costume design by Juan Lopez. Lighting design by Charles P. Davis. Sound by David Edwards. Continues Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. through April 4 at the Moulton Theatre, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach (no matinee March 20, no performances March 21, no evening performance April 4). Tickets: $14-$19. (714) 494-8021, (714) 497-9244.