All for naughty

"A martini, straight up, very dry, with a twist of lemon," Grimm orders meticulously. DuBois asks for the same, but with olives.

Once they've settled in, they begin to relax. They chat, complete each other's thoughts, and make naughty little jokes about the play they've been working on for two years, "The Miracle at Naples." The show is currently in previews at the Wimberly Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts.

"It is our baby," says DuBois, grinning mischievously.

"Our little foul-mouthed baby," Grimm adds with a devilish smile.

Described by the two men as a bawdy sex romp, "The Miracle at Naples" is a comedy set on Sept. 19, 1580, to be exact, at the Feast of San Gennaro, a festival honoring the patron saint of Naples. A ragtag crew of traveling commedia dell'arte players comes to a piazza in the city hoping to put on a performance. But the locals are anxiously anticipating the annual miracle, waiting for the vial of dried blood taken from their patron saint upon his death to liquefy - only it doesn't.

Without the miracle, the city comes to a standstill for fear of what bad luck may befall its residents. The performance is postponed. And while everyone waits for the miracle to occur, passions spark, resulting in myriad combinations of lust between the locals and the travelers.

The play is set at a kind of crossroads, say Grimm and DuBois: in an era when improvisational traveling troupes were fading and Shakespeare was coming to the fore, when rigorously circumscribed ideas of love were making way for a more go-with-your-heart approach.

"This play is about love that is more organic, improvised, discovered, sort of driven by emotion and imagination and freedom," says DuBois, who is directing the comedy.

Taking a sip from his martini, Grimm says that his play, while a little dirty, is really a meditation on the meaning of love.

"I think our understanding of love today is very much rooted in 19th-century ideas of romantic love or even medieval ideas of chivalric love," he says. "You know, that you have to suffer for your beloved, that you put your love on a pedestal . . . and only the best of us deserve that love. I have to wonder, because I grew up with this, I wonder is that really healthy? Is it good for us?"

The play itself was conceived over drinks. Grimm says that after working with DuBois at New York's Public Theater in 2006 on the much-praised "Measure for Pleasure" - another saucy comedy, this one set in the 18th century, about a womanizing knight lusting after a chaste virgin - Grimm simply had to collaborate with him again. The Public commissioned "Miracle."

After readings there and workshops with New Dramatists in New York, the play came to the Huntington when DuBois was appointed its artistic director. The Grimm/DuBois team is so highly regarded that representatives from art houses in New York are expected to come to Boston to view the show opening night, say the collaborators.

"The play has lots of friends, and I am just incredibly lucky and flattered for all the interest," Grimm says, blushing. "I must say, though, I am falling in love with Boston. It's such an interesting city. I'm really very pleased that it's premiering here."

Both men are reluctant to reveal the plotlines of "Miracle," but they do say there are four trysts involving seven characters.

"Do the math," DuBois says, chuckling. "It explores pretty much every sexual permutation to some degree or other. It doesn't discriminate."

Sex and sexuality are life's prime motivators, says Grimm, and their possibilities shouldn't be ignored by art.

"I view sexuality in my plays in a very sex-positive way," he says, suddenly growing serious.

"I think that it's unfair to humanity and unfair to us to shame ourselves for one of our most basic and pleasurable urges. And it's such an important part of our lives," he continues, his eyes glinting. "I mean, human beings don't operate from the navel up and the knees down."

The pair purposefully chose Naples for its romantic setting, cherishing the clash they envisioned between romance and Catholicism - and the resulting opportunities for a writer to explore the characters' varied personalities and sexuality.

"David's genius is that he created these characters, some with incredible intellectual intelligence while others have a deep emotional intelligence," says DuBois. "It is a gorgeous human exploration of love in its multiple forms, from the improvised, instinctual, visceral . . . to the more classical form of love."

Many of the actors have been with the play since the New Dramatists workshops. Tony Award winner Dick Latessa ("Hairspray") stars as Don Bertolino Fortunato, the leader of the troupe, and Lucy DeVito, daughter of acclaimed actors Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman, makes her Huntington debut as La Piccola, Fortunato's "long-suffering daughter," says DuBois.

The two men raise their glasses for a toast.

"I'm incredibly lucky," says Grimm. "We have a great design staff, many who worked on 'Measure for Pleasure,' an incredible group of actors. . . . When I find collaborators who I work well with, I have an allegiance to them and I want to work with them again and again. It's not a one-night stand. We get to really understand what we do. And then we do it."

Megan Tench can be reached at mtench@globe.com.