LENOX, Mass. — Talk about strangers in the night. There's lots of social intercourse between Frankie and Johnny. There's also lots of sexual intercourse. 

 

There's grunting and growling and grinding and puffing and huffing and moaning and groaning as Frankie and Johnny make love to the orchestrated orgasmic overture. You could almost smell the sweat. When climaxes are reached, lights go up and Frankie wishes she had a cigarette. (One of her funniest lines.)

 

Welcome to "Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune," now playing at Shakespeare & Company's Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre.

 

Terrence McNally's 1987 romantic comedy is sophisticated, sweet, sentimental and, yes, sexy. Post-coitus, Frankie wonders what she's gotten into. She and Johnny work at the same Manhattan greasy spoon. She's a waitress and failed actress with shattered dreams; he's a short-order cook and Shakespeare devotee with scarred hands.

 

On this Saturday night, they've crossed the line. Dinner, a movie and the move to become lovers in her one-room Hell's Kitchen walk-up. By three in the morning, Frankie is ready for Johnny to go back to his Brooklyn Heights apartment. No way. He declares he has found his soul mate. He suggests marriage and children. She expected a one-night-stand that probably wouldn't last a night. What she now wants is for Johnny to leave so she can watch TV and eat ice cream in peace.

 

What's love got to do with it? Everything

 

Stripped bare, literally and figuratively, Frankie and Johnny expose each other to their fears and frustrations. Nothing is simple or taken for granted. Frankie and Johnny hurl everything at each other; Frankie offers why they do not belong together, Johnny insists why they do. There are other times when she offers him food. She lets him stay. She gets into conversations with him. There are moments where she's genuinely interested in what he has to say. The play is a negotiation into intimacy.

 

The two joke and laugh together, make small talk, discuss suicide, reluctantly reveal sadness in their pasts and their sense of failure in the present, express their wants and their worries. As the hours go by, they reveal their personalities.

 

Even when the language is raw and guttural, it remains romantic. At one point, when Johnny convinces Frankie to allow him to just look at her private part, she opens up her robe and what we see on Johnny's face is not lust but a tender appreciation for a work of art. Creepy this man is not.

 

Jennifer Apple and Jamal James play the lonely souls with perfect chemistry. Theirs is a slow dance with the balance shifting back and forth. They become their characters, drawing us into their bruised lives without bathos but concern for their survival.

 

Director Nicole Ricciardi keeps the tempo smooth; there is not a moment of wasted time. And John McDermott's set does not offer any wasted space. 

 

Frankie's cramped apartment is an honest look at a cookie-cutter tenement: a dingy galley kitchen, scatted rugs tossed here and there, walls that needed painting, piles of clothing. Even the stove works, witnessed by the Western omelet Johnny makes for Frankie. The only thing missing are cockroaches.

 

Frankie and Johnny bathing in the moonlight, meatloaf sandwiches with butter (and no ketchup!), two lost souls who find connection and love, delicate pathos and Debussy, author of the classic composition that is the second half of the play's title ... indeed, a sparkling must-see gem.

 

Note: The production contains brief nudity and much strong sexual language. Parental discretion is advised.

 

"Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune" plays at Shakespeare & Company through Aug. 23. For tickets or more information, call 413-637-3353 or visit shakespeare.org.