Tracy Shaw regrets she's far too busy in the theatre to follow the repercussions of her recent murder.

All contact with Coronation Street's Maxine is, as needs be, pathologically discontinued.

Of course, she follows that storyline with fascination and remains in contact with her friends on The Street but, for her career, things have moved on.

There is a new challenge, which she is greatly enjoying - travelling the country with the brouhaha that accompanies performances of David Hare's The Blue Room.

The tease on publicity material for this play reads "pure theatrical viagra", not a conspicuously useful indication of its content.

Back in 1897 Vienna, playwright Arthur Schniztler wrote a revolutionary take on the sexual morality of his environment. He called his play Reigen - The Round Dance.

In a daisychain of five male-female erotic encounters, one character from each pairing moves on to another partner until the cycle brings us back to where it began. Lust makes the world go round, in a very literal sense.

Schnitzler's play was never intended for more than a group of like-thinking friends. When it had a public performance in 1921, there were enough influential prudes to ensure its withdrawal under obscenity laws.

Max Ophuls made a highly-praised film of the story in 1950 and, since then, it has been better known by his title La Ronde.

David Hare's version reduces the original ten characters to just two actors playing the entire variety of parts.

This seemed perfect for Tracy Shaw when she was looking for an acting life beyond Wetherfield.

After Corrie, she was offered a part in Chicago, an ITV drama, or this opportunity in The Blue Room. Mindful of the debt - and the instinctive pull - which she owed to her degree studies in a theatrical background, she opted for the most difficult.

"I decided to chose the only one that would take me out of typecasting," she says. "This play enables me to be more than just one person. That's what makes it completely different from television."

The touring production makes its way around the country under the heavy burden of all the titillation that greeted Nicole Kidman's nakedness at the original Donmar production and, now, all the tabloid and Graham Norton fuss about Tracy Shaw.

She is entirely sanguine about this line of inquiry.

"The play isn't about the fact that we are naked," she, quite rightly, claims, "What we are saying is the most important thing."

There is an episode in the drama where two characters a Playwright and an Actress discuss nudity and she says, "It's easier on stage." I asked Tracy whether she found this to be true and whether she found it easier as night followed night.

Her response was completely spontaneous: "I don,t even think about it. When we first take our clothes off there are embarrassed titters in the audience and then, after a while, acceptance, and then you know they are listening to the words."

The words are the most important thing. "For three weeks before opening in Cambridge," she says, "we analysed the play rather than rehearsed it.

It was so important that we understood exactly what we were saying and why."

When I asked her what she had gained as an overview, of the play - if it was or not cynical and pessimistic about human relationships - she had a very determined opinion. "It's not bleak, just very realistic.

"People shouldn't come to it with any heavy or bleak preconceptions. You should come to it in a light-hearted manner - it has issues and it has comedy. It's certainly not just about the naughty side of things."

Tracy has five parts to play and says that, predictably, she had more initial identification with the episodes involving younger characters but is now enjoying the learning curve that leads her to a gratifying empathy with the older ones too.

I wondered why the female role gets all the publicity and she hoped that Jason Connery (her equal, by the way, in getting his kit off!) would earn more of the audience response and review space that he deserves. They clearly have an enviable rapport.

One of the most intriguing things about travelling with this production is the variety of audience response. "Everywhere we go, it's different," Tracy Shaw says.

"It's partly about stage size and distance - how long it takes a joke to travel across the footlights, for example."

Then it's about whether people feel they can or should laugh or how, in their mixture of shyness and bravado or bemusement, they ought to respond to the play.

Another 12 weeks and then Chicago or ITV still beckon. In the meantime, Tracy (all the wiser) countenances no preconceptions about Eastbourne audiences.

The play deserves we repay the compliment.

It's showing at the Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne, from March 17-22, then the Theatre Royal, Brighton, from April 7-12.

For tickets, call Eastbourne Theatres on 01323 412000 or the Theatre Royal on 01273 328488.

Preview by David Wilkins, features@theargus.co.uk