As Rachel Bloom once wrote about casual hook-ups: “Hey sexy stranger, come back to my place. / Please don’t be a murderer. / Kiss me baby, all over the place. / I really hope you’re not a murderer.” Murder might not be in the offing in Laura Eason’s play Sex With Strangers, but something almost as unsavory might be when a well-regarded but not yet bestselling author takes a room at a writer’s retreat in rural Michigan, only to be forced to share it with a hot younger writer who was delayed by the blizzard that’s about to snow both of them in.
Eason is better known as a writer on TV’s House of Cards, but here she conjures up her own two-hander about characters who have sex because there’s no internet and no TV, and because the young man has actually read her flop of a first novel and loves it. However, is he the enthusiastic, lovable puppy dog that he seems to be in person, or is he the sleazeball who comes across in his popular blog about his amorous encounters with women he’s only just met? Stage West opens the regional premiere of this look at sexual politics this weekend.
Sex With Strangers runs Thu thru Jul 23 at Stage West, 821 W Vickery St, FW. Tickets are $17-45. Call 817-784-9378.
