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SEX WITH STRANGERS
Review

SEX WITH STRANGERS

August 19 2016

Sex with Strangers, Q44 Theatre, Swan Street, Richmond, Melbourne. August 18, 2016. Photography by Phil Speers, above and right: Carissa McAllen and Will Atkinson

Reviewed by MICHAEL FREUNDT

In the tradition of theatre in small, out-of-the-way places – La Mama, The Stables, Upstairs at the Old Playbox, and The Butterfly Club – Q44 has established itself upstairs in an eclectic, intriguing, artistic building in the inner-city Melbourne suburb of Richmond. Established by Gabriella Rose-Carter, an alumna of the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York, in 2013 as an actor’s training ground, it began producing, mainly North American contemporary drama, in 2014. 


Their current production is Sex With Strangers by Laura Eason. It’s her most performed play and was presented by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2012. Eason is a playwright and television producer (House of Cards for Netflix) who gained her experience as an actor, director, and writer at Chicago’s Lookingglass Theater Company.

Older disillusioned writer, Olivia (Carissa McAllen) who skips around the edges of the technological age while holding fast to words on paper like a life-ring, is confronted in her writer’s retreat by a young eager blogger, Ethan (Will Atkinson). He has always seen his success as inevitable but ultimately seeks to be more worthy like Olivia who he wants to help to appease his sense of not having made it, despite his one million followers and upcoming ebook deals. Paper is still better than a backlit screen.

This is a work about us, now; you can’t get more contemporary than that. Technological mis-match may be the issue here but it is only a metaphor for all the wrong decisions we sometimes make in the people we choose; and without giving too much away – no spoilers here – you may not be surprised by the ending but Eason delivers her point unobtrusively and leaves you thinking about it long after the curtain call.

SEX WITH STRANGERS

Having two disparate characters confined in a small space, first by the weather, then by lust, (or is it opportunism?) gives writer, director, and cast valid opportunities for humour; they are there in the text, however not exploited to their full potential in this production. McAllen and, especially, Atkinson, make the most of their characters but at times the director (Gabriella Rose-Carter) seems not to trust them. It is sometimes baffling to see filmic directorial decisions used in the theatre: two people facing the audience, one over the shoulder of the other, while conversing about important, moving, issues to do with love, commitment, success and abandonment. Acting is not only about words and action, it’s more about reaction and when actors are denied each other’s faces the dialogue loses the power and spontaneity that can make live theatre so compelling. 

The set, costume, and lighting (Casey-Scott Corless, John Collopy) and sound (Justin Garden) are excellent especially for what is obviously a play in the naturalistic tradition squeezed into a very small space. 

Monash Performing Arts, Malthouse, St Martin’s Youth Theatre, and The Victorian College of the Arts pepper the cast and crew’s biographies. This is a company to watch; they are skilled, committed, and are surrounded by a team of faithful supporters and dedicated workers, but the company needs to come to terms with its own space; go with it, not fight against it. This was my first Q44 production, and I look forward to others. 

 

Comments

  • Philby34

    It\'s funny how this production comes out just as I have experienced this brutality

    18:23 July 16 2017
    Reply

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