Sex With Strangers

Breaking Very Bad

Breaking Bad's Anna Gunn returns to the theater for the first time in 18 years for Laura Eason's Sex With Strangers. Opening Off-Broadway at the Tony Kiser Theatre, the play explores a romantic encounter between two apparently wildly different people, a young sex blogger and a middle-aged school teacher. A direct and simply drawn two-hander, Sex with Strangers is an engrossing portrait of sexual desire encumbered by a regrettable online past. Starring opposite Anna Gunn is Bill Magnussen, and the director is the Emmy-nominated David Schwimmer.

Who's Who?

Since graduating Northwestern University in 1990, Anna Gunn has had a steady stream of smaller roles in everything from Law and Order to Seinfeld. Her profile was raised to a whole different level though with her role in the seminal Breaking Bad. The AMC show about a chemistry teacher who turns to crystal meth cooking was a true pop culture phenomenon, and Gunn's role as Skyler White earned her an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in 2013. She is set to return to primetime television this October in the series Gracepoint, also starring David Tennant and Nick Nolte.

Gunn's co-star Bill Magnussen is best known for originating the part of Spike in Christopher Durang's Vania and Sonia and Masha and Spike, a witty Chekhov homage which won 2013's Tony for Best Play and gained Magnussen himself a nomination for Best Featured Actor.

While to some he'll always be Ross from Friends, director David Schwimmer has carved out an increasingly interesting career since leaving the show. On the big screen, he helmed 2010's Trust, a troubling exploration of online grooming, and also made the Simon Pegg vehicle Run Fatboy Run. He's no stranger to the theater though - a born and bred thespian, Schwimmer co-founded ensemble Lookingglass Theatre after his graduation in 1988.

What is Sex with Strangers About?

Ethan is a young writer who has risen to fame on the back of site Sex with Strangers, an explicit blog which has led to a book and an movie deal. Olivia is a middle-aged teacher who has been suffering from writer's block since the publication of her first novel years before. The two become involved after meeting at a Bed and Breakfast in Michigan, an entanglement which throws up all manner of latent wants and desires. Ethan hopes to be a good a writer as Olivia is (or was), while Olivia is longing for an open and meaningful relationship, a concept with which the overtly crass and misogynistic Ethan is not too familiar.