I might have got there relatively late in the season, but there was no way I was not going to see Sex With Strangers. A rom-com? With books in? Genre fiction on the stage? The only way it could have been clearer that this was my sort of play was if the actors had actually had “this play is for Jodi” tattooed on their faces.
(Fair warning – because this play is in my academic strikezone
area of speciality, I’m going to nerdle a lot about it. Be prepared.)
Maybe the fact that it was such a Jodi-play makes me
predisposed to be highly critical and nitpicky. I don’t know. But Sex With Strangers bothered me a lot,
largely because it left me cold. If there is one thing romance should not do,
it is leave you cold. You should be saying “awww” a lot. Even in pieces that
don’t have the guaranteed happy ending of the romance genre proper, you should
want things to turn out for the best. This means that you should like the
characters – at least a little bit. And this, I think, was my big problem with Sex With Strangers.
Let’s start with the less egregious of the two offenders
here, the character of Olivia (Jacqueline McKenzie). Her level of neuroticism
was absolutely suffocating. She was practically hysterical with it, especially
in the first act – I almost wanted to slap her and tell her to snap out of it.
I understand writers being precious about their work and being unwilling to let
unfriendly eyes see their work: I’ve felt that myself (what writer hasn’t?).
But the fact that three reviews – three, which weren’t even especially negative
– managed to cripple her for such a long period of time? Really? A writer who
wants to cut their reader out of their work altogether isn’t really a writer at
all. If a book is written and nobody reads it, has it really been written? And
if she is so unwilling to show her work to anyone, how has she managed to get
so “fucking brilliant”, as Ethan says? It is pretty much impossible to improve
without a) practice, and b) feedback. I found her total insecurity not only incredibly
frustrating, but far beyond the suspension of disbelief.
I think her insecurity was intended to undermine her
position as “self-assured older woman”, and in that sense, although it was
clumsy, it worked. It turned her into a damsel in distress, all ready for Ethan
(Ryan Corr) to swoop in to save. And swoop in he did: except he is not exactly
a knight in shining armour. This is not to say that all romance heroes should
be perfect, courtly men with no flaws ever who fix all their lady’s problems. Far
from it. Anyone who has read a romance novel ever will know that heroes are
frequently far more damaged than their heroines. Heroes have also done some
pretty godawful things, but at the end of the day, you should at least believe
that they are good, that on some level, they deserve the heroine (even if the
heroine is totally irritating). I couldn’t believe that about Ethan. Not for a
second.
Let’s start with his book, Sex With Strangers. A guy that’s made his millions by basically
exploiting women and writing about it? (I know he’s all like, “it was
consensual! they were willing!” but let’s face it, what’s he was doing is
essentially pick up artistry.) The fact that he continually admitted he was an
arsehole didn’t make him charming. It just made him self-aware. And why on
earth was Olivia supposed to believe him when he was all like, “I was a dick to
every other girl I’ve ever slept with ever, but I’ll be cool and awesome with
you”? Just because he helped her put her book online, even though she
specifically asked him several times not to? Ethan has a thousand arsehole red
flags, and this, I think, was the biggest one. When Olivia said no to him – no,
she didn’t want to put her book online; no, she wanted to go through
traditional publishing; no, she didn’t want him to read her book – he either
bullied her into submission or just went ahead and did what he wanted anyway.
The guy that does not respect a single one of your boundaries? Yeah, that’s romantic. And when he was all
like, “you owe me!” in the second act? I’m amazed Olivia didn’t yell, “fuck
you!” back at him. I nearly did.
I don’t think Ryan Corr’s performance helped Ethan’s case
any. Jacqueline McKenzie did a good job of making the Olivia that existed
beyond her neurosis visible (what little there was), but Corr’s performance
foregrounded Ethan’s douchebaggery. He was shouting all the time, which I think
was supposed to read as “gen Y jackass”, but also frequently read as “intimidating
bully”. If there really was supposed to be a clear division between Ethan Kane
and his evil alter ego Ethan Strange, it wasn’t terribly visible – probably the
only moment where it was was the moment when he took a phone call from a Vegas
club promoter, and turned into such an OTT parody of himself I’m surprised
Olivia didn’t throw him out her window. The play is not especially subtle with
its portrayal of Gen Y in particular, and Corr didn’t help. He was the Gen Y
representative that people from all the other generations bitch about: rude,
abrasive, and addicted to technology.
I also had a few problems with the structure of the play –
sex scenes were basically used as scene changes, when they should have probably
advanced the plot at least a little – but I don’t think I would have noticed
half so much if the characters were more likeable. On one level, I understood
the fantasy – a rich, attractive young guy who thinks your writing is amazing? sign
me up! – but these characters were a little too close to the archetypes that
gave us Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey for comfort: neurotic woman, man
who has no concept of “boundaries”.
Maybe I’m too used to analysing things as romances, but Sex With Strangers just did not work for
me. I wanted funny, romantic fun with books in. I wanted to say “awwww”. I
wanted to want things to turn out well. What I got was a play about two
unlikeable people who fuck each other a lot and fuck each other up.
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