Review: F**KING STRANGERS at Echo Theatre Company
The STRANGERS mount the Echo through August 24
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Erik Patterson’s F**KING STRANGERS is a piercing, funny, and heartbreaking look at the human need for connection in contemporary relationships. Focusing on four lonely people in Southern California, it dramatizes the ever-shifting facets of our relationships as we struggle to be vulnerable and honest with others and ourselves.
Those four lonely people — Julianne (Tasha Ames), a masseuse with a distant husband; Ru (Michael Sturgis), an agoraphobic and stunted thirtysomething, and Mick (James Tupper), a businessman, and Dylan (Sean Luc Rogers), a hustler, who role play together so they can keep themselves separate emotionally while still connecting physically — don’t realize they’re all on a collision course with perhaps devastating consequences.
Patterson was commissioned by the Echo to write this and he has created fully formed characters with detailed complexities, each uniquely damaged and striving to cope. It’s a tight script with illuminations of genius. It’s no small feat to construct a web as complicated as F**KING STRANGERS and keep it grounded and relatable — and surprising. There are parts of the story you may not see coming, and even if you do, they will still land with powerful resonance.
Confidently helmed by Echo artistic director Chris Fields, the ensemble is aces, each actor up for their specific challenges. Tupper is masterfully befuddled, Ames is funny and sympathetic without being weak, and Sturgis plumbs some serious emotional depths as he maneuvers through his trauma. But Rogers is the show’s MVP. His hustler, Dylan, is the trickiest role and he navigates every nuance with grace, empathy, and skill. The set design by Amanda Knehans is minimal, adding to the starkness of the storytelling, lighting designer Matt Richter’s light is moody and effective, and fight choreographer Tristan Waldron does a smooth job creating believable action, which is difficult to coordinate on stage.
Life is messy, relationships are messy, and there are no easy answers for any of the characters, nor for the audience, in F**KING STRANGERS. This mosaic of life is a pointed and precise dramedy that hits with absolute potency, and its in-your-face title reflects how we hardly know ourselves let alone anyone else.
Photos by Cooper Bates
F**KING STRANGERS runs at the Echo Theater Company, 3269 Casitas Avenue, through August 24. Tickets are available at EchoTheaterCompany.com.
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