In Strangers with Benefits, a man and a woman meet for anonymous sex. They repeat their encounters, and personal details inevitably get shared over time. Life events happen. Games of “F—, Marry, Kill” are played.
The set consists essentially of a bed, befitting the premise of a relationship centred on sex and its consequences. Both characters establish early on that neither is single. The choice by the playwright not to explore the reasons for either character’s infidelity is, of course, her prerogative. But it does lead to an emotional landscape consisting essentially of an elephant in the room the size of the bed.
While ostensibly about kink, Strangers with Benefits is an oddly conventional tale devoid of sexiness, heat, or human connection. Neither character feels like a real person. She’s prickly and brash; he’s goofy and supportive; and that’s about all we know. The rules of anonymity under which they meet also deprive the audience of access to the couple’s interior life. Background details eventually drip out, but they feel biographical rather than humanising.
The dialogue similarly fails to help define or illuminate the characters’ personalities. Though it aims at banter, much lands either somewhat askew or well short of sparkle. It is also divided evenly, in more or less the same voice, between characters, further frustrating any attempt to see them as distinct and fully-rounded individuals. Unfortunately, the acting style – stilted and formal, more inclined to reciting or declaiming the lines rather than embodying them – only exacerbates these flaws.
The premise of the play is a good one, and the questions it occasionally raises about the meaning of intimacy and honest interactions have much dramatic potential and interest. Even the apparent decision to eschew the usual storytelling touchpoints of character-driven conflicts and development arcs could potentially be marshalled to reinforce the anonymous sex setup and help the work define itself as an anti-rom-com.
As written, however, Strangers with Benefits tries to employ the creakier tropes of mass-market TV relationship dramas for ends they just can’t support. The iterated couplings accrue without narrative advancement, feeling more like an X-rated version of Groundhog Day than achieving any authentic emotional momentum. The ending appears more as a decision to bring this static story to a close rather than offering any actual resolution, which might be the anticipated outcome for a drama with many orgasms but no climaxes.
