SEX WITH STRANGERS
by Laura Eason
GEORGE STREET PLAYHOUSE
David Saint, Artistic Director
Michael Mastro, Resident Artistic Director
Kelly Ryman, Managing Director
Sex with Strangers is spicy and charged as two mismatched authors grapple to determine if it was love or opportunity that brought them together.
Ethan (Kyle Coffman), 28, is a high profile blogger that posts his indiscriminate sexual encounters as he pursues the challenge of sleeping with a different party girl every night for a year without the hangup of a conscious. He books a weekend at a winter bed and breakfast where he knows he'll find Olivia (JoAnna Rhinehart), 39, a talented, yet apprehensive writer.
At the onset, Ethan is brash and vulgar as he practically busts into the inn to escape the cold. It is immediately evident that the two characters share little in common and struggle to make it through their fist encounter. But as the conversation continues, they realize they have more in common than first depicted and Ethan is quick to show a different, more substantive side of himself. He is eager to shed his indecent profile as a writer and Olivia quietly wants to see her work in print again. Their separate situations, life changing if paired, lead them to a questionable love.
Their far-fetched relationship was a fast union of two writers; one youthful, worldly and entitled; the other reclusive, practical and pragmatic which renders them an unlikely couple. Their performances, however, were energetic and smooth as the entire play rested on these two characters alone.
A snug lodge set is the backdrop for this fast encounter that later spins into a novelist's book-lined apartment. Costumes of cozy socks and loungewear make the audience want to sit by the fire, too.
George Street Playhouse
9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ
March 8 through March 27.
