Theatre in Review: Sex with Strangers (Second Stage)

	Billy Magnussen, Anna Gunn: Photo Joan Marcus

Love and literature make strange bedfellows in Sex with Strangers, a tart comedy that strongly suggests writers should date people in other professions. The author, Laura Eason, has invented just such a pair, made sure they are supremely equipped to get on each other's nerves, and thrown them together in an otherwise deserted writer's retreat during a snowstorm. She is Olivia Lago, once a promising talent, now silenced by the deafening lack of praise for her first novel. He is Ethan Kane, who has turned his many one-night sexcapades into a memoir that has seemingly taken up permanent residence on The New York Times bestseller list, right next to its sequel. Of course, a movie is in the works. (If you are reminded of Tucker Max, author of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, you're on the money.) Ethan doesn't so much enter a room as take possession of it, seizing Olivia's wine, rummaging noisily for food, and using the bathroom while failing to close the door, all while keeping up a running monologue of astonishing triviality. "Am I seeming like a dick?," he asks, thoroughly unfazed when the answer is in the affirmative.

Instead of being repelled by this invader, Olivia is oddly fascinated, as if an entirely new life form has landed in her sitting room; she is also gobsmacked by his success. It helps that Ethan is thoroughly disarming, is all too aware that his books are trash, and generally behaves like a naughty boy with the only key to a bank vault. It turns out that they have a mutual friend, and Ethan has read, and greatly admired, Olivia's forgotten first novel. After she gets over the shock of that revelation, it's not long before they're entwined on top of the chest that serves as a coffee table.

By now, Eason has managed to make us care about this distinctly odd couple. Olivia, ruefully noting the many friends from school who made careers for themselves, says, "Some have been successful so long they're in the comeback phase of their career." Ethan improbably tries to boost her confidence by citing Emily Dickinson. "She got mixed reviews, too," he says. "And so do I." We even find ourselves rooting for them to get together, a prospect that isn't as improbable as it seems at first. He swears that he is done with Ethan Strange, the pen name of his loutish seducer persona, and has begun working on a serious novel; he is also developing a smartphone app that will promote new fiction writers. He even gets the seriously skittish Olivia's permission to republish her first novel as an e-book and also promises to hook her up with his agent. What could possibly go wrong?

As it happens, plenty. Back in Chicago, where they both live, serious tensions arise between them. Against Ethan's wishes, Olivia has dipped into his writings and is appalled at the many stories of naked girls left lying in pools of their vomit. (Ethan insists it's mostly fiction, but gets vague when queried about the details.) When a contract with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux looms for Olivia, Ethan suddenly shows signs of jealousy and possessiveness; with no warning whatsoever, he wants to launch her novel on line instead. Olivia wonders if she is involved with puppyish, charming Ethan Kane or Ethan Strange, serial abuser of women. The more Olivia resists Ethan's involvement in her work, the more he suspects he is being used as a steppingstone. As they try to talk it out, their mutual distrust and self-interest lie exposed, impossible to deny.

In its general outlines, Sex with Strangers is a bit reminiscent of Donald Margulies' Collected Stories -- both feature an affectional relationship between writers compromised by their ambitions and hidden agendas -- but the details are very different and, in its look at the state of literature in the 21st century, Ethan loves the instant gratification of digital publishing, but Olivia yearns for the comforting presence of real books; the way things are going in our digital world, she sighs, "We'll all live in empty white rooms, save for a couple of shiny silver rectangles that will hold our whole lives." Ethan's career is a study in modern publishing practices, such as they are: His blog garnered a big following, leading to the books; meanwhile, many of the young ladies featured in his pages have started blogs of their own, creating a cross-referenced Internet library of sexual misadventures. And both Ethan and Olivia seem increasingly trapped in some strange neutral ground between their professional identities and authentic selves.

It's to the credit of the two fine performers that characters who could seem impossibly self-involved make such a strong claim on our affections. As Ethan, Billy Magnussen employs his gift, seen so vividly in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, for goofing up the most basic line with a wildly inventive comic reading, but here he uses it to create a complex, often troubled, character. Handing Olivia a gift, he turns a simple comment -- "It's called an iPad" -- into the occasion of a huge laugh. He does the same thing when, having just met Olivia, he notes, "You're really rule-oriented, huh?" But observe how a note of resentment creeps into his voice as Olivia's career takes off, and when the time comes for the knock-down, drag-out fight they've been headed for all along, Magnussen finds a thoroughly authentic fury inside the charming man-boy we've seen all night long. And there's something just a little bit heartbreaking in the way he sadly notes, "Your book made me love you. My book made you hate me."

Anna Gunn is crisply amusing as Olivia, who, facing 40, is shocked to discover that life might not have passed her by, even if it means running off with a 28-year-old best-selling author whom she thoroughly disrespects. She earns honest laughter when rebuffing Ethan's morning-after conversation ("I hate to reminisce about sex."), assuming the pose of an athlete in training before hearing her reviews, or coolly responding when Ethan questions her choice of a sexually ambiguous nom de plume. ("Well, being a woman is always a huge advantage as an artist, and I'd like to see how I do without that leg up.") She is especially touching in the play's coda, set a couple of years later, which reveals how little either one of them has moved on.

Despite her considerable experience, Eason is something of a new name in these parts; on the basis of this, we can only hope she'll come around more often. Even more welcome is the remarkable eye for detail shown by the director, David Schwimmer; this is the sort of production in which the simple act of answering a smartphone signals a shift in power between these two lovers. Schwimmer has also worked closely with his designers. The swapping out of a bulletin board for a painting in Olivia's apartment -- neatly designed by Andromache Chalfant -- tells you something important about her, as does the man's shirt and tie, hanging on a coatrack, crying out to be commented on. Similarly, the costume designer, Esosa, suggests something major has happened to Olivia by dressing her in a flattering orange shift that is completely different from anything else she has worn previously. Japhy Weideman's lighting tracks the passage of time between scenes by showing the daily movement of the sun through a window. Fitz Patton's sound design is thoroughly solid.

Eason manages to keep us guessing about the final outcome between Ethan and Olivia up until the play's final seconds, and beyond. The play is something of a conjuring trick: What begins as a conventional, if amusing, sex comedy becomes a portrait of a thoroughly real -- and thoroughly impossible -- love affair. It's the sort of thing one imagines will provide both Ethan and Olivia with fine fodder for their next novels.--David Barbour