Or, rather, the play that some newspapers and even ticket buyers dare not speak. It is, simply (and bluntly), Shopping and Fucking.
For another variation, there is New York Times critic Ben Brantley's tongue-in-cheek version: Shopping and "[that] much-used but still widely unprintable Anglo-Saxon verb referring to carnal intercourse."
The imported work by 31-year-old British playwright Mark Ravenhill opened at the New York Theater Monday. Its tough, funny, unflinching look at Trainspotting-esque twentysomethings has won solid reviews and praise as a surprising morality tale.
But it's Ravenhill's title that is getting the big buzz.
"Most people won't say it," says Scott Cooke, box-office manager at the New York Theater. "They'll say, 'I want Shopping and...'"
That unfinished phrase with the uncertain, awkward dot-dot-dot ending is also the euphemistic title of choice for editors at the New York Times, the nation's acknowledged newspaper of record, which has yet to record Shopping and Fucking's full, given name. (No ad listings in the Times, either.)
The Times isn't the only news organization, even in this day of presidential sex scandals and oral-sex debates on Nightline, to feign shyness.
The usually beyond-shame New York Post, a publication that thinks nothing of referring to ex-White House intern Monica Lewinsky as the "Sexgate siren," is also adopting the Shopping and... moniker. Ditto for Associated Press.
Award a point of originality to the Daily News, which opts for an asterisk instead of an ellipsis.
The show's supposedly unprintable name makes for interesting reading. How about this opener from an Associated Press review: "Does Shopping and... merit its title?" (What title?!?!)
The straight dope can be had in local New York alternative weeklies (the Village Voice and New York Press) and nationally in publications such as New York.
Don't think for a second that this confusing name-game business is hurting business. For one thing, the show's got good genes. It was a smash last year on London's West End. For another, there's nothing like a little sexy controversy to fill the seats.
As Scott Cooke says, ticket-buyers may be a little hesitant to speak its title out loud, but he knows exactly what they want.
"We just sell them the tickets," he says.