Theatre review: Sex With Strangers

A writer writing about writing in Laura Eason’s Sex With Strangers, which opens at a remote Michigan cabin that's used as a writers' retreat. It's so remote, in fact, that a snowstorm has kept most of the participants away, and only two people have shown up: Olivia (Emilia Fox) wrote a well-received novel a few years back, but bad marketing saw it flop and she now works as a teacher, writing only as a hobby. Ethan (Theo James) is ten years younger but already much more successful - a blog he wrote about his one-night stands turned into two hit books, and he's now writing the movie adaptation, but he hopes once that's done he can branch out into more literary writing. A mutual friend introduced him to Olivia's novel and he became a fan, braving the weather to meet her and find out more about the woman behind the words.

Theatre review: Rapture, Blister, Burn

Perhaps in an attempt to counteract the testosterone overdose from last Tuesday I still haven't quite recovered from, theatre has since been serving me up a whole lot of feminism. The latest is at Hampstead, where Gina Gionfriddo's Rapture, Blister, Burn looks at the age-old question of whether a woman can have it all. A feminist writer and lecturer specialising in the politics of pornography, Cathy (Emilia Fox) is not just a successful academic but a bit of a media darling. When her mother Alice (Polly Adams) has a heart attack, Cathy's satisfaction in her life of career over family is shaken, and she starts to believe that when Alice dies she'll be left alone. She takes a sabbatical to return home and look after her mother, but she's not the first person she calls: It's Don (Adam James,) the ex-boyfriend who married her best friend Gwen (Emma Fielding) when Cathy's career started moving faster than he could keep up with.