“Handjob,” Erik Patterson’s 2019 play at Echo Theater Theatre Company, made good on its title with the help of prosthetics. “F— Strangers,” his new play at Echo, doesn’t up the ante so much as continue to probe what lies behind forbidden desires. The play, directed by Echo Theater Co. founding artistic director Chris Fields, evokes a modern-day version of Arthur Schnitzler‘s “La Ronde,” only with fewer characters and more tech. Scene after scene depicts a carousel of intimate encounters. There’s more talk than action, and one person tends to dominate the chat. Mick (James Tupper), a wealthy married man as rigid as he is deceptive, sets up fantasy scenarios with Dylan (Sean Luc Rogers), a pricey male escort, that he insists be acted precisely according to script. Any slipup threatens to destroy his ardor.Julianne (Tasha Ames), a married massage therapist, basically unloads her entire life onto her client, who lies face down to receive a full-body rubdown. My muscles were tensing at the torrent of oversharing. I can’t imagine what benefit her customer was getting out of the experience. Ru (Michael Sturgis), a young man suffering from agoraphobia, spends hours in video sex chat rooms searching for connection rather than sex. He eventually forms a strange relationship with Dylan, who is charmed by Ru’s awkwardness and vulnerability, particularly around sexual matters. Their meet-cute is more of a meet-annoying, but different strokes for different folks. Sean Luc Rogers and James Tupper in “F— Strangers” at the Echo Theater Company. (Cooper Bates) The play begins in a non-intimate mode, with Ru stranded on the shoulder of the freeway waiting for AAA. He’s having a fraught phone conversation with his mother, who’s upset to learn that the reason his boyfriend can’t pick him up is that they’ve broken up.When we next encounter Ru, six years have passed and he hasn’t left his parents’ home in that time. Holed up in his old bedroom, he’s a recluse who spends his days browsing on escort sites. Sturgis specializes in these kinds of neurotic eccentrics, but his portrayal didn’t help me identify Ru’s secret appeal or believe in the trauma that we later learned occurred when his car broke down. I found “F— Strangers” intriguing and frustrating in equal measure. Listening to another person’s sexual kink is about as fascinating as hearing a recap of their most recent dream. But there’s a bigger problem with the play: The characters just aren’t that interesting.Why Mick and Ru choose to pay for intimacy and Julianne is at her most open in the presence of a naked client isn’t all that hard to understand. They’re stunted human beings with a warped capacity for relationships.That’s a common enough type, deserving of empathy. But these personal limitations introduce dramatic challenges that aren’t easy to overcome. The play isn’t content to be a satire of how we don’t connect in this over-mediated age. Instead, it wants to expose the wounds that are driving its characters to look for love in all the wrong internet places. So they need to be not just undressed but fleshed out. Strangely, Patterson, an Emmy-nominated TV writer, devotes more attention to the plot than to the play’s psychology. I found the twists in the story (which I’m trying my best not to spoil) startling in an energizing way. But I didn’t buy the behavioral shifts some of these turns entailed. Tasha Ames and James Tupper in “F— Strangers” at the Echo Theater Company. (Cooper Bates) The most egregious case is Sturgis’ Ru, who transforms over the course of the play from a jittery wreck into a vengeful, plaintive monster. The performance, perhaps intending to inject a note of potential menace, plays up Ru’s anger at the expense of his hurt — and comes off as grating and utterly unsympathetic. Rogers’ Dylan, a screenwriter’s fantasy of a sex worker, becomes whatever Patterson needs him to be in the moment. He may charge a fortune, but he’s the most selfless character in the play and seemingly the most cultivated human being. At any moment, I thought that Dylan, a knowledgeable movie buff, might reveal that he had a degree in film studies from Brown University. Ames’ Julianne is underdeveloped, her family life a conceit of the play rather than a lived reality. Sturgis, Rogers and Ames were all in Fields’ Echo Theater Co. production of Samuel D. Hunter’s “Clarkston,” a more scrupulously observed relationship drama with its own share of surprising turns. The material Patterson gives them is too fragmentary, not to say inconsistent. Tupper’s Mick, at the mercy of his brittle fetishes, may be the most believable of this quartet. Until, that is, the play’s rather retrograde climax, when the playwright’s provocateur wildness goes limp. Suffice it to say, the well-heeled American family, safely ensconced in its sexual dissatisfaction and backlogged rage, gets to live another day. ‘F— Strangers’ Where: Echo Theater Company, Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., L.A.When: 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays, Mondays, 4 p.m. Sundays. Ends Aug. 24Tickets: $15–$42.75Contact: echotheatercompany.com or (747) 350-8066Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes (no intermission)
