Imelda Staunton

​Review by: Mark Shenton

​I've seen some blistering performances over the years in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee's savage and magnificent marital drama about a long-married couple at perpetual war with each other, among them Billie Whitelaw and Patrick Stewart, Diana Rigg and David Suchet, and Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin. But I don't think I've ever been quite so shaken to the core and wrung out to dry as I was while watching the utterly ferocious Imelda Staunton and Conleth Hill slugging it out for nine rounds as they weaponise the power of words against each other -- and the younger couple they invite over for late night drinks and draw unwittingly and remorselessly into their excruciating games.

The power of it, though, comes not just from the savagery with which they play them -- and how the implicate and compromise their guests -- but also the desperation and humanity of co-dependency that underpins it.

And Imelda Staunton -- whose speciality as an actress is to expose raw, undiluted feelings with a naked transparency that makes them palpable -- is both frightened and frightening as Martha, just as she was as Momma Rose in Gypsy: she lets you see into the very soul of the character. She is stunningly matched by Conleth Hill's playful but no less damaged and damaging George.

Their guests are also superbly taken by the strutting blonde boy wonder of Luke Treadaway, who at just 28 is an ambitious new arrival in the biology department of the University where the play is set, and Imogen Poots as his wife Honey. James Macdonald orchestrates the fierce, shifting interplay between them with an all-too-plausible sense of shocking reality.
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These may be games they are playing, but they have a horrible, even heartbreaking, truth. Producer Sonia Friedman has just received a record 31 Olivier nominations for her productions over the last year; she can already start counting on nominations in 2018 for this. This is an amazing production of a contemporary masterpiece.

Sex With Strangers is an interesting advanced romantic tale. Featuring Emilia Fox and Theo James, the play is an investigation of enthusiasm, longing and desire.

​Theo James, who prepared at Bristol Old Vic before making his name in Hollywood as Four in the Divergent establishment, makes his stage make a big appearance in Sex With Strangers. He plays an essayist called Ethan who turns into an online networking star subsequent to beginning a lewd blog, which is then immediately transformed into a top of the line book with a motion picture in the pipeline. It's a convincing and nuanced depiction of a man who is both manipulative and gullible, never going to budge on distinction however moderating understanding the cost of his "terrible kid" persona.​

​Writer Laura Eason has bounty to say in regards to 21st century life and how our fixation via web-based networking media and oversharing impacts how we are seen, how we act and how we now collaborate with others. Laura is likewise a maker of the Emmy grant winning Netflix indicate House Of Cards.

​Under the heading of Peter Dubois, Ethan and Olivia (played by Emilia Fox) are divisive and once in a while unlikeable characters yet their activities seem to be accurate and as their relationship and the story advances you build up a more noteworthy comprehension and sympathy for their flawed intentions.

​When we meet Olivia she is an author apparently content with wavering on the edge of haziness. Unyielding in her feelings yet perplexed of feedback, her certainty develops as she gets to be distinctly drawn into the circle of the appealling Ethan. Emilia's delineation is consummately pitched and it stays equivocal in the matter of whether she is driven or is driving her more effective yet apparently less gifted love intrigue.

Fashioner Jonathan Fensom makes two extremely unmistakable and authentic universes, from the warm and shortsighted bounds of the country log lodge, to Olivia's cosmopolitan limits; the adjustment in landscape denote the developing many-sided quality of the two's relationship.