Review: SEX WITH STRANGERS at TheaterWorks

Laura Eason's contemporary play with the suggestive title has seen lots of productions since opening at Steppenwolf in Chicago in 2009, and for good reasons. It's more than just an economical choice for small theaters (just two actors) and a hot topic. It asks provocative questions, too: How far to bend toward commercialism, as an ambitious artist with high aspirations? Can two people coming from different sides of a digital divide, effectively of two different generations, build lasting relationship? Can we adopt a performative 'public' identity to get famous and rich without having it sully our actual way of being?

The production at TheaterWorks in Hartford is passionately acted by an attractive pair of performers who are convincingly hot for each other. Courtney Rackley plays Olivia, a gifted novelist in her late 30s whose first book didn't sell particularly well, but who knows she is the real deal as a writer, though she makes her living teaching. When the show opens, she's holed up in her pjs in a secluded B&B beyond the reach of the internet, editing the manuscript of her second book. A snowstorm traps her there with the 20-something Ethan (Patrick Ball), who has solicited her whereabouts from a mutual friend, a Pulitzer prize winning writer.

Ethan's two books (one of which gives the play its title) were on the New York Times paperback non-fiction list for five years. He spun his popular blog about his exploits trying to beat a bet that he couldn't bed a stranger a week for year into fame and fortune. Yet he aspires to gain a more literary reputation and he's a fan of Olivia's writing--and very quickly, of her.

At first, she's annoyed with his intrusion and his youth, which is most clearly evident in his near panic at being beyond the reach of wifi and unable to use his phone. But very quickly, she succumbs to his brash and insistent charms. In eight scenes over two acts, the play jump cuts through a tumultuous month of relationship, followed by one final scene that takes place a year and a half later.

I have some quibbles with this script. Why doesn't Olivia show any alarm, even momentary, at being stalked to this remote location? How is it that a college prof who is emphatic about not wanting to share her second book with this fanboy hand her computer over to him? Why is there no mention, even in passing, of STDs or HIV/AIDS when taking on a sex partner with Ethan's history? These lapses give the play a fairy tale quality when in so many other good ways it is bound up in the nitty-gritty realities of our time.

And I have a quibble with Rob Ruggiero's direction, which is (as always) lively, detailed, and believable. But all the sex is very one-note, and very male-driven. Perhaps this is mandated by the script itself, but in either case, these two jump each other's bones often enough that some variety would be refreshing!

Still, it's great to see a sex-positive contemporary script with a strong female protagonist, who doesn't throw other women under the bus; she even sticks up for all Ethan's other sex partners, despite the possibility that at least some of them might be publicity seekers trying to exploit his name recognition to build their own. In an age when Colbert spent years playing a 'type' on TV, which catapulted him into winning the most coveted late night host spot, and musicians from David Bowie to Lady Gaga came to fame via characters they adopted, we should really examine the appeal of the performative persona in our times. This play is a good start.

Laura Eason has written more than 20 plays (including many adaptations of classics like HUCK FINN and ETHAN FROME) and she's been Artistic Director at Lookingglass Theater in Chicago. She's currently writing and producing HOUSE OF CARDS on TV. Clearly she has something to say about ambition and gender. I hope she'll keep writing for the stage, too.

SEX WITH STRANGERS runs through April 17 in Hartford. Audiences should expect partial nudity and brief but charged sex scenes. Running time is two hours, including one intermission.

Photo credit: Lenny Nagler