Sex with Strangers at Chicago's Steppenwolf
Playwright Laura Eason Provokes
By: Susan Hall - Feb 16, 2011
Sex with Strangers
by Laura Eason
Upstairs at Steppenwolf, Chicago
Sally Murphy Olivia
Stephen Louis Grush Ethan
Jessica Thebus Director
Todd Rosenthal Scenic Design
Ana Kuzmanic Costume Design
J.R. Lederle Light Design
Andre Pluess, Ben Sussman Sound Design
Through May 15
Sex with Strangers is a delightful and provocative production of Steppenwolf. Sally Murphy as Olivia and Stephen Louis Grush as Ethan, playing contemporary writers, engage us fully.
In the interests of full disclosure, I am a lucky member of Olivia’s older generation. I have inherited my interconnectivity from my son, starting with the primitive Internet forms up through the next-to latest Mac Book Pro, a Blackberry and an I-pad today. I am on Facebook because a like-aged friend suggested it. I sign in to be in touch with my friends and also my son and his generation. I communicate mainly by email and have a twitter account because I entered a competition to do opera plots in 140 characters and had to tweet the entries. (I did not win).
I have thought a lot about privacy, and decided to define it as: who I discuss my private affairs with is my choice. I assume that everyone knows everything about me. I am not particularly concerned.
A Swiss businessman friend has just testified about money laundering before the Bundestag in Germany. Among his businesses is a privacy platform he developed to enhance the security of our credit cards. He defines privacy as being able to keep private whatever you want to. I understand this argument. It is not mine.
This all seems relevant to Sex with Strangers. It is a play about revelations between people as they are expressed in words. These words are of course delivered by various means by different people at different times. Some methods are high tech. Others are as simple as a conversation between two people, face to face, or belly to belly.
As we meet Ethan, a contemporary hunk, he has retreated to a country writers’ haven. Scheduled guests have not arrived because there is a storm. To his delight, but perhaps not surprise, he finds Olivia, a lone woman, holed up finishing her second novel.
Olivia does not intend to publish because she can’t stand responses to her work. What she needs is George Eliot’s husband, George Henry Lewes, who kept all reviews from her. Eliot was the best-selling author of her time, but could not take criticism, good or bad. When Lewes died, Eliot married his cousin, at least three decades her junior. When she made sexual advances on him during their honeymoon in Venice, he jumped out of the gondola.
In Laura Eason's play, Ethan blogs daily, invites women for sex and then reports on it. He has no problem getting fodder for his blog. The material has now been gathered into a best-selling book.
His book can be held. Olivia’s will eventually be an e-book only, but she concludes that Ethan, the advanced techie, was right. It would have been nice to have a real book to hold.
This may be a conclusion others come to – holding a person, a book, a letter is really nice. Nicer than holding air.
The dialogue is hip and often humorous. From either side of the age divide, there is much familiar territory.
Some perils of either communication are mentioned: anonymity, the opportunity to misrepresent, lack of being ‘in touch.’ The suicides and murders that have resulted in this form of communication do not come up.
Implicit in all the goings-on are old-fashioned words, whatever the means of their delivery. Olivia begins a blog. Ethan writes a novel, based not on his e-exploits, but dreamed up in his head.
Their relationship, which becomes as quickly sexual as any heated word dialogue on line might, suggests a leap away from words for two people who are completely word dependent. This is where the world of older and younger people joins: in words. Words have driven the leap into not the sack but the sofa in this case.
John 1:1 in the Bible states: In the beginning was the word. Sex with Strangers strongly suggests that as far as we can see into the future will be the word. Dance does not depend on words. Neither does painting. But to share these art experiences, even between us and us, we use words to explain. Can anyone see an alternative?
Privacy becomes the words we choose to share. Sex with Strangers is a fun and provocative exploration of this idea. We are left with an entirely appropriate question mark.
Go and have a delightful afternoon of theater and laugh at your experiments online and off. Wonder at them too.