The Stage

Sex with a Stranger

Published Tuesday 7 February 2012 at 10:03 by Ben Dowell

Stefan Golaszewski is perhaps best known for his BBC3 relationship sitcom Him & Her, a modern hymn to youthful monogamy. So the image of Naomi Sheldon’s Ruth, silently ironing her boyfriend’s shirt just before he indulges in post-nightclub sex with someone else, seems all the more poignant.

Russell Tovey (Adam) and Jaime Winstone (Grace) in Sex With A Stranger at Trafalgar Studios, London (previous pictures shows Russell Tovey with Naomi Sheldon as Ruth) Photo: Noel McLaughlin

There’s a faint echo of John Osborne’s frustrated Alison in Look Back in Anger in the image, too. But in his third stage play, Golaszewski’s young people are not, like Osborne’s, angry with their world - if anything they are too conventional and accepting.

From the moment Russell Tovey’s ambitious sales guy Adam picks up recruitment consultant Grace to enjoy the ritual of club, cab, kebab shop and the climactic fumble in her bedroom, it’s unpleasant, sad, dreary, hilarious and never less than painfully plausible. The writer hovers over each awful nugget of small talk and awkward silence, constantly fascinated by ordinariness.

The short, staccato scenes are played out with just two chairs and a sofa, but there’s enough nuanced richness and grim energy in the writing, acting and Andrea J Cox’s subtly evocative soundscape.

Tovey, always good as a gormless straight guy, introduces just the right amount of lurking, unscrupulous darkness, while Winstone expertly introduces a hint of fear and emotional longing behind Grace’s peroxide, permatanned facade.

But the character who lingers longest in my memory is Sheldon’s Ruth - her desperate, fearful silences, looks of hope and the final, shattered realisation of quite what she has let herself in for tug at the heart and provide the play’s vital emotional core.