Names can be deceiving.

Sex With Strangers, the new play currently running at Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s Upstairs Theatre, sounds salacious, evoking anonymous lust tinged with a dose of danger. The company itself enhances this notion with its description of the production.

“Ethan is a hot young writer whose online journals of ‘sexcapades’ are the buzz of the blogosphere. Olivia is an attractive 30-something whose own writing career never took off. They hook up, sex turns into dating and dating into something more complicated.”

The blurb is hot and sexy. And Sex With Strangers is both. But it’s much more.

The action opens on a writer’s retreat in snowy Michigan. Frustrated author Olivia is the sole guest, the building owners gone for the week. Her solace is interrupted by the arrival of Ethan, a proud hotshot in his early twenties whose blog-turned-book about his trysts with hundreds of women, titled “Sex With Strangers,” is at the top of the bestseller charts. He’s come to the cozy abode to finish an overdue screenplay draft of his book.

Olivia is fascinated by Ethan’s upfront nature, the misogynistic character of his work, and his surprising intellectual bent. Ethan is surprised by Olivia’s insecurity. He read her critically maligned book and loved it.

They buzz around each other, talking literature, the writing process, communication and sex. Tension runs high, finally breaking when the two strangers fall horizontal onto the couch and get it on.

The remaining week is filled with more conversation and psychological mining. Olivia introduces her young mate to great writers. Ethan prods his older lover to embrace the computer age and share her in-progress work on the Internet. And they have sex. A lot.

A mutual respect grows, but it is tested when they leave their snowbound isolation for reality, where literary success proves fleeting for one and finds the other. The new dynamic alters the relationship irrevocably.

Sex is a small component of Sex With Strangers, but it symbolizes everything that propels and destroys the characters’ personal and public identities, careers, and views towards writing and success.

A philandering past becomes a roadblock for one, while also serving as a stepping-stone for another. Like an anonymous fling, the nature of Internet publishing reaps overnight rewards, but leads to questions of legitimacy and self-doubt. The navigation of these minefields is riveting.

Stephen Louis Grush delivers an incredible performance as Ethan. With a shaved head, tattooed frame and clunky combat-booted feet, he commands the stage with wide-stance bravado. Marching about cock-surely, he tells stories of women, fame and technological know-how with an incessantly ringing cell phone in hand.

But beneath the ego lies a young man caught in a balancing act, one who yearns for respect as a “real” writer while maintaining a celebrity bad-boy façade. The struggle calls into question Ethan’s initial fawning over Olivia. Does he love her, or merely have sights on her work? As the play unfolds, though, the superficiality fades to reveal emotions and motives far more complex than anticipated. Grush handles this transformation with subtlety and nuance, bringing empathy to a character who could be reviled.

Steppenwolf ensemble player Sally Murphy stars as Olivia, but she was ill on the night of a recent press performance. Understudy Brenda Barrie filled the shoes without skipping a beat.

Barrie brings a quiet sophistication to Olivia, bunching her tall, slender frame under sweaters wrapped tight by defensive arms. The reserve coupled with whip-smart, well-read intelligence comes off as old-school snobbery, but first impressions soon fall in a familiar manner.

As Olivia tastes life beyond her cloistered insecurity — one that appreciates her talents — she opens. Ambition is reawakened. Technology is embraced. Forgotten potential becomes vivid. And she’ll do anything to find that once-elusive success. Barrie opens as a performer during this change, giving Olivia confidence and strength that is both admirable and stinging.

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By Suzi from North Center
Posted: 02/11/2011 10:42 AM

Great review -- with some real insight into the dynamics of the play. Makes me want to go see it.