Sex With Strangers

Jacqueline McKenzie (In The Next Room, or the vibrator play) plays opposite STC newcomer Ryan Corr in Sex With Strangers, a tender, sharply observed love story which premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre earlier in 2011. Olivia is a typically literary type: bookish, private and deeply disinterested in technology. Ethan is a Gen Y blogger who has topped the New York Times bestseller list with his conquest by conquest chronicle of a year on the singles scene.  Strangely, they instantly click, but it’s not long before their online lives threaten to destroy their real-life connection. Jocelyn Moorhouse, best known for her work on film such as Proof and How To Make An American Quilt, directs.  

Cate: Jacqueline McKenzie’s returning to us, and she plays a novelist who’s had a middling successful novel, but she hasn’t become the star that she’d thought she’d be. She goes to a writers’ retreat where Ryan Corr’s character, an incredibly successful novelist in the blogosphere, happens to be. His very recent success stems from his serialised, sexual exploits with women over the course of the year. Despite his notoriety, he is seeking credibility, while at the same time she is unknowingly seeking fame. They strike up this unlikely, but very physical and real, connection. However when they return to their lives in the city, she makes the mistake of reading his blog and that disjunction of a writer’s character, the sense of who are we on the internet, seeds doubt into their relationship.

It’s a Gen X, Gen Y, intergenerational relationship with aspects of both comedy and tragedy.

(Image: Collider)