Sex With A Stranger is the third play from Stefan Golaszewski; writer of BBC 3's hit sitcom Him & Her and erstwhile writer and star of BBC4's critically acclaimed Cowards. Golaszewski's first two one man plays (Stefan Golaszewski Speaks About A Girl He Once Loved and Stefan Golaszewski Is A Widower) dealt with teenage love and adult demise respectively, here he plugs the gap with a play about the middle part; the confused bit in our twenties when we're a little unsure of whether we're grown ups yet.
Adam (Russell Tovey) snubs his girlfriend Ruth (Naomi Sheldon), and leaves her at home while he goes out for a mate's birthday. Later that evening he picks up Grace (Jaime Winstone) at a club and gets the nightbus back to hers. Bleak, funny and excruciatingly accurate Golaszewski's play locates the place where three lives - with all that has gone before, and all is yet to happen - entwine in a cheerless morass of uncertainly, boredom, loneliness and empty lust.
Both pieces contain a cruel twist, or rather a malign stroke of fate, that it would be a crime to give away but which add some exceedingly dark shadows, and both are superb on the subject of sex – frank, even graphic, but full of truth, tenderness and delight.
Russell Tovey & Naomi Sheldon. Photo: Noel McLaughlin
Date: 9 February 2012
Stefan Golaszewski's new play Sex with a Stranger opened this week (6 February, previews from 1 February 2012) at Trafalgar Studios 2 where it plays a limited West End season until 25 February 2012.
Tackling the temptations of a married man during his night on the town, Adam needs an opportunity to get away from his dull relationship with wife Ruth for an evening. He takes a night off to celebrate a friend’s birthday, partying into the early hours.
While at a club, Adam meets Grace who then invites him to her flat. Sex with a Stranger follows the journey to their one-night stand and gives further insight into the life of an unfaithful husband.
The role of Adam is played by Russell Tovey, who also starred in Golaszewski's popular BBC3 sitcom Him & Her. Tovey is joined in the cast by Jaime Winstone (Grace) and Naomi Sheldon (Ruth).
“Skilfully constructed, painful-to-watch but very funny three-hander in the smaller of the Trafalgar Studio … 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 … Golaszewski… made waves two or three years ago with his white-suited solo performances at the Traverse and the Bush … Phillip 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.”
“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 … In this new play… they combine arrestingly … Tovey does a nice job of conveying both Adam's geniality and the frustration that makes him stray … 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.”
"Golaszewski trains his extraordinary flair on playing around with the tragicomic possibilities of a story chopped into cheekily hyper-abrupt black-out sketches that are presented in calculatedly unchronological order and set against sequences that are an agony of real-time protractedness … Golaszewski has a devastating ear for the tiny bizarreries of this near-phatic communion, plus the uncondescending ability to keep the characters juicy. You never feel that they are being baked to death with derision, as they bark their shins in the dark against a too-low bed … Naomi Shelden wrings your heart and irritates you to bits as the girlfriend who, by having been too suspicious, has put herself in a weak position and can't object when Adam claims that he is going out for a mate's twenty-sixth birthday. As she helps him get ready, in a banked-down fever of foreboding, you feel that their lives have quietly horrifying DIY Neil LaBute play. A dazzling achievement."
"Golaszewski… memorably captures the humiliations of lust and the painful inequality of love … 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 Phillip 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."
Dominic Maxwell The Times ★★★
“Sex with a Stranger… is dominated by the banality, frustration and pre-coital rigamarole that most… stories skate over … Golaszewski’s smart structure and sharp eye and Phillip Breen’s beautifully acted production ensure that those boring bits are never actually boring … Winstone convinces completely as the dolled-up Grace… Tovey… deliberately keeps personality out of Adam, whose occasional bursts of anger suggest someone more frustrated than he lets on. And frustration is the key note of his scenes with Ruth … As he sits distractedly in their flat, bluffing his way repeatedly round why Ruth isn’t invited on his big Saturday-night drinking session, Sex with a Stranger makes its point and then makes its point again. But then that’s its point … This is an artful exercise that asks us to join the dots for ourselves. It keeps buzzing in the brain long after its final moment of disconnected domesticity.”
"Two things give this cryptic, 80-minute three-hander by Stefan Golaszewski… an edge over its rivals: its air of quiet melancholy and its unusual empathy with the play's insecure female victim … The structure is also unorthodox … While the play may offer no great revelations, the dialogue is fresh and sharp, and the sadness palpable … Phillip Breen's atmospheric production stands out … Two hot young actors give the piece a bit of glam. Russell Tovey as the guiltily treacherous Adam and Jaime Winstone as the giggling, nervous Grace are both very good. But it is Naomi Sheldon as Ruth who really captures the attention: she conveys all the anxiety, fear and loneliness of a woman who instinctively knows…that she is about to be betrayed. All one can say is that Golaszewski, for a male dramatist, shows a rare understanding of female distress."
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.
If you want ironing, try Look back in Anger....brave....sad....bollocks.
Nice acting though. - coral
26 Feb 12
Booking for Sex With a Stranger was on a par with asking to see Mike Bartlett's Cock, but I have seldom been so confused by how to react to a play. Three unbearably boring characters spouting unbelievably mundane banalities made for 85 minutes of unspeakable tedium. On occasion it ground to a complete standstill - watching a shirt being silently ironed for three minutes, even by a pretty actress, does not make for exciting theatre, nor do painfully slow conversations about night buses or salad. The chap sitting opposite me looked ready to throttle all three of them and I could understand his mounting irritation. However, there is a suspicion that this is exactly the effect Stefan Golaszewski was trying to achieve, to portray the sterility of Adam and Ruth's relationship and the seemingly inevitable one night stand. If that wasn't the intention then I should have followed my instinct that this is 1-star rubbish. Jamie Winstone finds a spark of personality in the vacuous Grace and Naomi Sheldon is good at looking mournful but Russell Tovey is given a thankless task as the charmless Adam - in relaity neither of these two girls would go anywhere near him. This might be a case of the emperor's new clothes with everyone looking for profundities that don't exist and in fact it really is monumentally boring. - David Baxter
24 Feb 12
Some nice acting but poor script - Tim
12 Feb 12
This play could quite easily be played in a double-bill with Herding Cats, as both are very short, and both detail the lonely and banal lives of three apparently normal people. Both plays are caustic and realistic and bleak (though perhaps Herding Cats is slightly less hopeful and slightly more funny than this). Superficially, this play is about a man who has sex with a stranger, but Russell Tovey's central character is no ordinary man: he's a banal common everyday sociopath, who mirrors back at women what they say to him to pretend he has empathy. It is Tovey's character Adam who is the real "stranger" here, unknowable, because, beneath his casual banter, he is as knowable as a great white shark. He is a predator playing other people as if they are pawns in a chess game. Tovey is chilling and convincing in this play, and Stefan Golaszewski brilliantly and realistically conjures for him the most banal everyday life experiences (seducing a girl at a noisy club, casually lying to his girlfriend at home), in which he operates from scene to scene purporting to be reasonable and understanding, but truthfully being detached and uncaring. What he wants is conquest. Naomi Sheldon is astonishing as his betrayed girlfriend, Ruth, her big eyes the most sadly expressive of anxiety as any I have seen. The bewildered vacancy that sometimes overtakes her eyes is sometimes hilarious, always sad. Jaime Winstone is also great in this, playing a character who just might be a little bit like Adam, but also a little bit like Ruth. Her earthy performance very much places the play in the real world, her vacuity and vanity and emptiness aching with honesty. Tovey's character is wonderfully conceived, perfectly played, and hard to take, and that's why this play is more hopeful than Herding Cats: whichever girl escapes this monster's influence will surely have a better future. - steveatplays
09 Feb 12
I thought the ironing scene was very brave and very sad. - Taljaard
07 Feb 12
The only thing better than this review is the play itself.
xo - Luna
Opened 29 Sep 1930, on site of the Old Ship Tavern. Famous for the Whitehall Farces (Brian Rix) which started in 1950. 608 seats. Member of the Society of London Theatre. An [ATG] member. Closed after the run of Abigail's Party July 12th 2003. The 377 seat Trafalgar Studio opens early 2004. A further 100 seat studio space in the pipeline. Renamed from the Whitehall to Trafalgar Studios.
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