Sexual sparks fly when a one-flop-wonder of a novelist and a best-selling chronicler of a year’s worth of one-night stands find themselves the only guests in a rural bed-and-breakfast in Sex With Strangers, Laura Eason’s provocative, conversation-provoking two-hander, now playing at the McCadden Place Theatre.

The last thing 30something Olivia (Sarah Wylie) is expecting this snowy winter night is to find herself sharing digs with hot younger thing Ethan (Jonathan Dylan King), but this is precisely what happens when the sex-blogger better known as “Ethan Strange” shows up at the b-&-b Olivia is currently occupying all by her lonesome.

But hey, he’s got a reservation, and once the handsome hottie has gotten over his dismay at being unable to go online (or even use his cell phone, the inn’s Wi-Fi being kaput until further notice), the twosome find themselves comparing life stories over glass after glass of red wine.

The recovering victim of some very bad marketing (her first novel got generally good notices but failed to reach its target audience), Olivia has been making ends meet by teaching college courses while putting the finishing touches on what she hopes will get her fiction back on bookstore display tables.

Ethan, on the other hand, could hardly care less about seeing himself in hard copy, a bet with friends that he could bed a stranger a week the old-fashioned singles-bar way having paid off in a viral blog turned New York Times bestseller (not so coincidentally titled Sex With Strangers), about to be given the Hollywood treatment.

Given Ethan’s stellar track record with women (many of whom have themselves blogged enthusiastically about their sexploits), it should hardly come as a surprise that Olivia might soon be finding herself the next notch on Ethan’s much-notched belt.

Far less easy to divine is just what’s going on in the younger man’s mind, which is just one reason Eason’s play keeps us on the edge of our seats as Olivia and Ethan alternately attract and repel each other with who knows what end in sight.

Director Kate Sergeant savvily avoids the easy route, which would be to plop Olivia and Ethan down on a sofa and have them play Sex With Strangers’ entire, extended first scene seated.

Instead, she keeps the duo on their feet and in constant motion for minutes on end, sexual sparks building until their mutual attraction is simply too powerful to resist.

And sexual sparks there are indeed between Wylie (who’s got a young Meryl Streep thing going for her, i.e. combining refinement, intelligence, and sexuality in a single, compelling star turn) and the dangerously handsome, equally riveting King, who keeps both Olivia and the audience wondering, “Can this man be trusted?” even as we find ourselves falling under his spell.

Wylie’s set design makes ingenious use of the McCadden Place Theatre’s built-in staircase and upper alcove to create a comfortably appointed bed-and-breakfast and (following an intermission scene change) Olivia’s New York digs, a production design completed by Kathy O’Donohue’s expert lighting and some seductive musical underscoring between scenes, though a professional designer might have figured out a way to have cell phone notifications sound as if they’re coming from the devices themselves rather than burst out loudly from some unspecified somewhere in the room.

Scene changes do tend to drag a bit too, particularly post intermission, and it’s disconcerting on more than one occasion to see Olivia and Ethan break off mid-foreplay when a scene ends and exit separately off a still dimly lit stage.

Still, these are relatively minor quibbles in a production that showcases two up-and-coming actors and a director who knows how to get the best from each.

Sex With Strangers is produced for Red Jasper Entertainment by Wylie and Mike Sitnikov, the latter of whom also operates sound and lighting. Daylyn Paul is stage manager and Megan Rose Rubel and Tiffany Cornwell are crew. Ken Werther is publicist.

 With production costs continually on the rise, it’s no wonder the theatrical two-hander has become an increasingly popular genre in recent years, though not every playwright can capture an audience’s attention with just two actors on stage.

Laura Eason is just such a playwright, Sex With Strangers is just such a play, and with Sarah Wylie and Jonathan Dylan King doing all around bang-up work, these are two sexy strangers you won’t mind getting to know.

McCadden Place Theatre, 1157 N. McCadden Place, Hollywood.
www.onthestage.tickets/gentleman-george-productions

–Steven Stanley
February 23, 2024
Photos: Zack Morrison

Tags: Gentlemen George Productions, Laura Eason, Los Angeles Theater Review, McCadden Place Theatre