Sex With A Stranger review, Trafalgar 2

Love bites

Anticipating Sex With A Stranger is usually more exciting than the actual act. So it is for Adam and Grace, savouring the journey home after their meeting in a club; their banal, stilted conversation laced with expectant pauses, embarrassed giggles and a series of  manic tongue lunges that emphasise the hunger rather than the meal.

Appetite and food provide metaphors throughout Stefan Glaszewski's script. Adam and Grace devour fast food kebabs as well as each other. Back at Adam's house where his nervously anxious partner, Ruth, irons the shirt in which he will betray her, food is part of the dialogue. There is a cry for help in every mouthful from the spare shared salad at lunchtime to the home-made pie Ruth will eat alone while her man goes out hunting, chewing the gum he's taken from her handbag.

Jaime Winstone is a gloriously giggly Grace whose bravado evaporates with each advance to the bedroom. As Adam, Russell Tovey is callously believable with pecs that clearly cheered the young women in the audience. Naomi Sheldon plays Ruth as a plain, trusting bird, constantly flapping and pecking and fretting. It's all strangely believable and well-suited to the tiny space that is Trafalgar 2.

In conclusion: Sex With A Stranger is an interesting ninety minutes but the format - a series of staccato everyday exchanges switching back and forth across time -  makes the last third a bit of a trial, which is a shame.

References
Trafalgar Studios
Michael Billington review in The Guardian