THEATRE REVIEW: SEX WITH A STRANGER
In Stefan Golaszewski’s Sex with
A Stranger we’re dropped right into the post-club conversation between
Grace (Jaime Winstone) and Adam (Russell Tovey) as they both awkwardly try to
summon interesting things to say whilst waiting for the bus that’ll deliver
them to Grace’s bedroom.”That club was really good, wasn’t it?”; “I actually
like buses”; “I wouldn’t want to be too famous” – these are the
nuggets you will variously laugh and cringe at as the pair make their journey
via bus, taxi and foot. Meanwhile the chronology is shuffled to give us a better
picture of who these people are – and particularly in Adam’s case – where they
come from.
The dialogue given by the central
pair comes off hilariously vacuous yet somehow you don’t judge them too harshly
for it. These two have nothing in common but the desire to shag, yet must spend
an hour or more together en route – what else do they have to talk about but
Homebase? It must be said that the attention to detail in this regard is
brilliant – all conversations throughout are invaded by tedious observations
about brands from Coca-Cola to Sainsbury’s between characters that sadly – and
quite comically – share no spark.
There are a lot of quick edits
onstage, perhaps inspired by film, that while admittedly interestingly do work
much better and less awkwardly in film. Further there are three
scenes that focus on one character onstage for a notably elongated period,
which, with the exception of the last, labour the point and add little.
Having dominated for much of the
first half of the production it is a pity that Winstone is so absent in the
second, apart from one difficult-to-place wedding scene and a spot of pre-going
out hair-teasing. Not only is she missed for the laughs she provided earlier
but this imbalance doesn’t allow Grace’s character to develop in quite the same
way Adam’s does.
The remainder of the play goes to
Adam and his partner, Ruth (Naomi Sheldon), who is shown at home earlier that
day making Adam’s lunch and preparing the shirt that will see him later pull
Grace. Initially an irritatingly one-dimensional character, Ruth blossoms as
the play continues to a fully-realised, very convincing type of person, worried
by and withering in a relationship that is no good for her. Without entirely
diminishing the feelings of pity you might have for Adam – he’s not happy
either – you leave feeling pretty strongly that he’s been too cruel to Ruth.
But in the end the play diverts too
much attention from Grace at its own cost.
GrabbersMovie: @RawBeard And
@russelltovey is brilliant in it.
mrchrissullivan: 4 out 5 stars GB @russelltovey x
russelltovey: RT @FuelPublishing: New
Russian Criminal Tattoo exhibition announced.
russelltovey: RT @TeleTheatre: Sex
with a Stranger, Trafalgar Studios, review http://t.co/syHX9mn5
#Stefan_Golaszewski
Bayonnaise: Just passed Russell Tovey
on Goodge Street. Ears smaller than they look on TV.
NOT THE BEING HUMAN I
REMEMBER
Tom_In_Oz_: @Abslom_Deek sadly
you have lost me but it ain't because of Tovey leaving - it's the shocking
script and poor plotting of characters. I left a comment at BBC Being Human Blog No.325
Abslom_Deek: @Tom_In_Oz_ Very
disappointed to hear that, though Ep1 was trying to do many things. Give the
more settled Ep2 a go before you write it off.
Tom_In_Oz_: @Abslom_Deek the new ppl
are now on a diff journey to the original cast it doesn't link with anything
you can relate to and I can't understand 'Tom' at times with his accent! BTW
the baby was amazing in last week's ep! But got no credit!
Abslom_Deek: @Tom_In_Oz_ Babies
were great! But technically supporting artistes so no credit! Give the new guys
time to settle - their journey’s not begun!
Lip-curling Eve steals
scene in drama that has lost its bite
Leicester Mercury
It takes true talent to steal a scene
when you're sharing the screen with a ghost, a dying werewolf and a vampire
dressed like a wise man in a nativity play. But Eve managed it on Being Human
(9pm, BBC3). As Russell Tovey jerked and spasmed his way through the hammiest
death scene on TV in yonks, still finding the breath for a schmaltzy few words
of farewell, Eve curled her lip in disdain.
It was a mute gesture, but she spoke
for us all. I don't know Eve's real name, by the way. She didn't get a credit
at the end. Perhaps that's because she'd spoiled the big finale. Or perhaps it
was because she's a baby.
Being Human, for those of you who
have never seen it, is the story of a ghost, a werewolf and a vampire, all
sharing a house and trying to blend in unnoticed with the normal world around.
And if you have never seen it, it's
probably not worth starting now.
The first part of series four was
messier than a teenage pig's sty: hard enough to follow if you've watched from
the beginning; nigh-on impossible if you're new.
Having already killed off original
vampire Mitchell at the end of the last series, and mislaid werewolf Nina
somewhere before the start of this one, Being Human has now lost Tovey's
happy-go-lucky George too.
Which only leaves Annie the ghost
from the original cast.
"I don't know what we are
now," she sighed, halfway through episode one.
Happy to help, Annie: You're the
Sugababes of TV. Same name, completely different line-up.
In itself, that isn't enough to sink
the show. But on this evidence at least, BBC3's flagship drama has lost its
way, and much of its appeal to boot.
Like Misfits on E4, the pleasure of
Being Human came in its very British take on a very American genre.
Writer Toby Whithouse was almost as
concerned with the domestic drudge of a bunch of twentysomethings sharing a
house as he was with all that full moon and neck-biting business.
But this episode, which was riddled
with standard-issue supernatural guff about the Old Ones returning, plus some
sub-Terminator nonsense about the future, the resistance and suchlike, had none
of the humour and fizz of before.
It was tosh, and flatter than last
week's Tizer.
"So this is how it starts,"
said Annie, after George had finally finished his flamboyant death throes. For
me, I think that's where it ends.
russelltovey: http://t.co/G3jtPMuQ Happy :-) x
kentonallen: @russelltovey You should
be. Loved it! x
H_Woolfenden: Can't wait to see the
lovely @russelltovey in Sex With A Stranger! Hope you had a fab
opening night Russell. x londontheatre.co.uk
russelltovey: @H_Woolfenden :-)
x
russelltovey: RT @theinvisibledot: ID
114: SEX WITH A STRANGER. Four stars in the Evening Standard
http://t.co/ytCBZTTm @russelltovey @NaomiSheldon1 #sexwithastranger
SuiteTV: @russelltovey following me
tweeting you the other day I got plenty of retweets and new followers! Your
like the Suite TV Jesus! x
russelltovey: @SuiteTV :-) x
AlistairNichols: @russelltovey congrats
on the great review. X
russelltovey: @AlistairNichols :-)
x
Sex with a Stranger at Trafalgar
Studios, starring Russell Tovey and Jaime Winstone, is a perceptive study of a
failing relationship.
One of the great consolations of
middle age is that you don’t have to go to discos, or “clubbing” as this vile
activity is now more glamorously called. I count the nights I spent at
Cinderella Rockerfellas in my distant youth, trying in vain to persuade girls
to dance with me, as among the loneliest and most humiliating of my life. And
all the horror came flooding back watching Stefan Golaszewski’s Sex with a
Stranger - though his hero, initially at any rate, seems to have got lucky.
Golaszewski is best known for his
BBC3 sitcom Him and Her but he is also a fine writer for theatre and his
monologues about first love and love in old age which he delivered himself at
the Bush Theatre a couple of years ago struck me as wonderfully frank, true and
tender.
In this new piece, featuring Russell
Tovey, one of Alan Bennett’s original History Boys and the male star of Him and
Her, as well as the fast-rising film actress Jaime Winstone (daughter of Ray),
he focuses on a trio of characters in their twenties, and memorably captures
the humiliations of lust and the painful inequality of love.
In the early scenes we watch as Adam
cops off with Grace after a night of dancing. There’s a lot of snogging and
awkward conversation as they make their slow way back to her place on the night
bus, but the encounter proves far from blissful, and the emptiness of their
lives is painfully caught.
But in later scenes we discover that
Adam has been playing away. He has a live-in girlfriend, Ruth, who we see
lovingly ironing his shirt in preparation for the night out with his mates
which ends with his infidelity.
It’s a moment that is clearly a
homage to Osborne’s Look Back in Anger, but also extraordinarily touching in
its own right. Golaszewski’s movingly captures the moment when shared affection
decays into suspicion, frustration, dishonesty and grief.
Tovey powerfully captures the
duplicity and unease of the philandering Adam, Jaime Winstone poignantly
suggests the vulnerability and anxiety that underlie Grace’s brassy Essex Girl
persona, and Naomi Sheldon pierces the heart as the woman left alone at home
who comes to learn that her love is unreturned.
The play is artistically subtle, with
its clever, non-linear time scheme, and the director Philip Breen and his
outstanding cast skilfully lay bare the deeper feelings that underlie the
apparently banal surface of the dialogue. There is a sense of ice at this
play’s heart, and one leaves it with a shiver.
Sex With a Stranger, Trafalgar Studios -
review
Russell Tovey has won
an army of fans as the werewolf George in Being Human and Jaime Winstone is a
sparky performer who's made a strong impression in the TV zombie drama Dead Set
and films such as Kidulthood. In this new play from Stefan Golaszewski,
best-known for his BBC3 sitcom Him & Her (which stars Tovey), they combine
arrestingly.
Tovey and Winstone are Adam and
Grace, who meet in a club. Adam invites her outside, cheesily saying he's got
something he wants to show her, and they make their way back to Grace's for
what threatens to be an awkward one-night stand.
Adam trots out relentlessly banal
conversation. Grace laughs too much and rummages through her handbag. We see
them snogging in the street and plotting a fumble in the back of a cab. There
is a painful familiarity in their meandering chat and moments of ineptitude.
Even when they cut loose, helped along by tequila shots, there's a mix of
excitement and toe-curling ungainliness.
Adam kisses Grace as if he's trying
to eat an apple off the branch. Grace struggles with her outfit, and later,
because she doesn't like being seen in her underwear, insists on making out
with the lights off.
All of this is amusing, but things
take a nastier turn as we learn the context for Adam's night with Grace. He is
stuck in a dull relationship with neurotic musician Ruth.
She's the sort of woman who enjoys
discussing bookshelves and explodes when someone joins the wrong queue at the
supermarket. A night away from her, partying with friends, is an escape route
for Adam.
Tovey does a nice job of conveying
both Adam's geniality and the frustration that makes him stray.
He's especially powerful in a scene
where he berates Ruth for being paranoid about his eyeing up other women. As
Grace, Winstone is adept at suggesting the nuances of embarrassment; her timing
is spot-on. And Naomi Sheldon perfectly evokes Ruth's vulnerability.
There's a risk that a piece so
concerned with the ordinary could lapse into flatness. But Golaszewki's writing
has teeth; although the material is slight, it's eerily well observed and
shrewdly woven together.
Phillip Breen's intimate production
is absorbing and the committed performances make this a satisfying, unsettling
experience.
Until February 25, 2012
Sex With a Stranger - review
Not exactly what it says on the tin, Stefan
Golaszewski’s skilfully constructed, painful-to-watch but very funny
three-hander in the smaller of the Trafalgar Studios is a story of double-talk,
a boys’ night out and a marriage turning slightly stale.
Working backwards from a night on the
tiles where, after some serious clubbing, Russell Tovey’s married Adam is
heading for instant sex in the park, and her flat, with Jaime Winstone’s
amazing Grace (well, she lives five minutes from Homebase), the play unpicks
the story behind Adam’s newly ironed shirt.
Meanwhile, Grace is “doing” her face
and hair to hit the scene. The spare, minimal writing makes Harold Pinter look
like Ronald Firbank. Some scenes are ten seconds long. Tentative chat-up is
contrasted, like bright pins, with the wary notes of deceit as Adam wangles his
night out from Naomi Sheldon’s doe-eyed, devoted Ruth. Ruth plays violin
in an orchestra (one scene shows Adam slumped at the concert, the night after
his outing). Even more surprisingly, we suddenly see Grace making a thank-you
speech at her own wedding: is she married, too, and to the unseen “friend” she
flat-shares with?
We are somewhere in Essex, near
darkest Leytonstone. Adam is in sales, with ambitions in social media, Grace in
recruitment. Adam was at college with Ruth, and there’s a sense in which he’s
returning to his atavistic roots with Grace.
Tovey conveys, with the slightest of
looks and gestures, an admiration for Grace’s unaffected bone-headedness, mixed
with raw sex appeal, a refreshing change, perhaps, from Ruth’s eager niceness
on a date in Pizza Express, and around the house, which she keeps very tidy.
Golaszewski, who writes BBC3’s Him
& Her, made waves two or three years ago with his white-suited solo
performances at the Traverse and the Bush. He’s a talent on the move, and his
director Philip Breen has served up this play with real flair and
deftness.
The acting of all three performers is
unbeatable, perfectly pitched and nuanced in the tiny space, and while Tovey
and Winstone are brilliant at falling guiltily and nervously into their tryst,
Sheldon’s projection of misplaced trust and innate goodness becomes almost
heart-breaking as she settles down on the sofa, betrayed and bookish.
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