Review: Sex with Strangers

I'll be honest with you right from the off, I didn't like Sex with Strangers. However, I am going to have a go at reviewing it as objectively as I can, because it did have some redeeming features.

The Hampstead Theatre inform us that,

Olivia, an attractive and talented but underappreciated mid-career writer, is unexpectedly trapped overnight in a secluded, snowed-in B&B with Ethan, an equally attractive and wildly successful young blogger. 
Her latest novel is an unsung masterpiece; his blog is being made into a movie. She prefers books; he prefers eBooks. She is anonymous; he has half a million Twitter followers. But opposites soon attract – passionately – as each realise they want more of what the other has. But the closer they get, the more they must confront the murky side of ambition, success and Wi-Fi…

Now, as the description points out, the attractive novelist and the attractive blogger are indeed trapped in a B&B. They become involved and, over the course of the play, become less attractive personalities with every passing second.

Peter Dubois does a reasonable job of directing Laura Eason's work, but there are moments where things seem forced and awkward, for example as the couple are about to have sex, the gauze lowers in front of them, and there's a cut to blackout, every time. Every. Time. After a while this is clunky, and the momentum is lost. It feels like Eason was writing the kind of character development that is deployed on screen rather than stage - something that can be shown through a montage of time passing. It doesn't work in a play.
The characters are also remarkably unsympathetic, as we see the pull of performative identities and the lure of money cause them both to sacrifice what they hold dear. By the end I just didn't care what happened to them. On saying this, though, there were some subtleties in the character development that were well executed from the writing, I just disliked the characters so much that I was too busy being annoyed to appreciate them.

There are other positives, however. Emilia Fox and Theo James put in strong performances; despite the fact that James seems to have been cast because he looks good with his shirt off, he is particularly convincing as one of a certain breed of social media star. Also, at some points, the dialogue between the two characters is punchy and naturalistic, but not enough to win me over. Oh, and the set design is lovely.

Some people seem to have enjoyed the play. I'm not one of them. Go and see it if you will, but you might find yourself, head in hands, laughing at the number of times Theo James' character has undressed, or irritated by the fact you are stuck watching two characters you don't really care for

3/5 (begrudgingly): Pretty but disappointing
Hampstead Theatre
Until 4th March