'Sex' can't shake workshop feel

Pity Steppenwolf Theatre's new “Sex With Strangers.”

Continuing the troupe's theme this season of examining the “public-private self,” it has to follow hard upon scorched-earth productions of “Detroit” and “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” It would take a powerful play to keep pace.

Despite its provocative title, however, “Sex With Strangers” doesn't measure up. In fact, it's not so much a sexual romp as it is an in vitro fertilization of a conceptual hybrid between old and new media.

In short, this production, nurtured at Steppenwolf two years ago as part of its “First Look” series, still seems more of a lab experiment than a fully developed play. Its workshop is showing.

The two-character, two-act comic drama stars Steppenwolf member Sally Murphy as Olivia, an aspiring novelist who is actually more comfortable settling for being a teacher. Stephen Louis Grush, who helped mold the character in the original “First Look” production, is Ethan Strange, a blogosphere sexual provocateur more or less modeled after Tucker Max.

Olivia has published a small novel that made a critical splash, but soon sank from sight, although Ethan is one of the few readers impressed along the way. He, by contrast, has a well-read blog, “Sex With Strangers,” a tell-all diary about his weekly couplings with someone new, which has in turn produced a hit book and now a demand for a screenplay.

They meet cute as the only two visitors at a snowbound bed-and-breakfast that serves as a Michigan artist's retreat. Although they clash at first, they soon begin a flirtation, and one can see Ethan's evident skill at wooing the unresponsive, even someone as resistant as Olivia.

He readily admits to being a “certified” jerk and that “the tasteless youth of the world put me on the best-seller lists.” Olivia can only respond with a hesitant but winning smile.

The actors and director Jessica Thebus are astute at drawing the contrasts. Grush's Ethan is a tattooed skinhead bulked up in a down parka and baggy jeans, while Murphy's Olivia sits relatively unprotected in leggings and a wraparound cardigan. They perform a wonderful dance of body language, and while they have no fewer than three sex-scene blackouts, Olivia appears most vulnerable after a blackout in which she agrees to let Ethan read her tentative follow-up novel.

Ethan is so struck, he offers to create a stir by putting it up online, but Olivia says, “I don't want mysterious strangers saying horrible, misspelled things about my work.” Later, when he's reading the online comments aloud, she's barely onstage she's so ready to bolt.

Given that the first act ends with a goodbye kiss and Olivia settling down to research Ethan's own history online, it wouldn't be fair to reveal where the play goes from there in the second half, except to say it's back to Chicago at Olivia's apartment. Yet it is fair to judge that this conflict relationship, thinly plausible to begin with, seems increasingly unreal.

Olivia's apartment is lined with books — as many as in George's study in “Virginia Woolf” — but when she pulls out a new translation of “War and Peace,” a tome Ethan describes as “a murder weapon,” she has to admit she hasn't read it. That sets off alarms where any self-respecting literary novelist is concerned, and they don't subside when Laura Eason's script goes all “Larry Sanders” with snarky, name-dropping references to Jonathan Lethem, Salman Rushdie and the Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishing house.

Trying to make the point that today's inescapable mass communication will tear us apart, the plot devolves into a thin conflict of who's zooming who that just isn't enough to sustain it. In the end, the characters are types, not people, new media versus old, with Olivia's warning, “You're too young to know I'm too old,” offering a chuckle, but no real resolution.

“Virginia Woolf” has already proved itself a classic, and “Detroit” has the feel of something that will always capture the anxious uncertainty of early 21st century America. By contrast, “Sex With Strangers” seems here and soon gone, as evanescent as yesterday's blog post — unless, of course, they can somehow get Justin Timberlake and Jennifer Aniston to film the movie version, which would seem to be what this play really aspires to.

<b>“Sex With Strangers”</b>

★★ ½

<b>Location: </b>Steppenwolf Theater, 1650 N. Halsted St., Chicago, (312) 335-1650 or steppenwolf.org

<b>Showtimes: </b>7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, matinees Saturday and Sunday at 3 and Wednesday matinees at 2 on April 13, 20, 27 and May 4, 11, through May 15

<b>Running time: </b>One hour and 50 minutes with intermission

<b>Parking:</b> $9 in garage adjacent to theater

<b>Tickets:</b> $20 to $73

<b>Rating:</b> For older teens and adults; rough language and sexual subject matter