Conversations After Sex
Rating: ★★★
Venue: Park90 Theatre, London
Cast: Olivia Lindsay, Julian Moore-Cook and Jo Herbert

Unexpected encounters. Anonymous strangers in hotel rooms. Unguarded intimacy. When a woman in possession of her own sexuality meets a carousel of different men, she finds herself uncovering more than she expected. Grief. Loneliness. Promiscuity. Connection. It’s all here, in this startling play from award-winning writer Mark O’Halloran.

Mark O’Halloran’s award-winning play, Conversations After Sex, makes its London debut at the intimate Park90 Theatre, with just three actors bringing the story to life, as we find ourselves in hotel rooms, bedrooms, his house or her house while the central character ‘She’ (played brilliantly by Olivia Lindsay) tries to find meaning in the grief and loneliness that consume most of her days following the death of her ex-partner. 

Over the course of a year, we follow this always-unnamed woman’s hook-ups with a handful of recurring men, as she uses sex, drugs and drink to seek solace and navigate her grief. An unmade bed is the centrepiece of Georgia Wilmot’s stripped-back set, and the scenes are short and snappy, with a new place and person being introduced by a pause, some flashing lights and varying degrees of nudity or items of clothing strewn across the bedroom floor. 

The counterpart to Olivia Lindsay’s excellent ‘She’ is the equally convincing Julian Moore-Cook who plays all the men and whose characters all have their own personalities and charm in their own unique way. A Brazilian man whose life in Ireland is putting his life back home on hold, or a man who relies on drugs to deal with his mother dying. An enthusiastic young musician, or an overconfident lover who gives his fiancée an STI after trysts with multiple women.

As each scene progresses, She and the men become more open and vulnerable with each other, with the physical exposure of human intimacy prompting an emotional release of shared pain and suffering. The sharing of their stories seems to become a form of healing for both of them, with the power of having someone to talk to and just listen becoming plain for all to see - despite assurances that She merely “likes to fuck”. 

It is fair to say the universal themes of grief and loneliness underpin the whole play, though a delicate balance is drawn between light and shade with Jess Edwards’ clever direction. We watch the very messy, human reality of what it means to find your way after experiencing suffering, which is counteracted by sarcasm and finding humour in loss, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments throughout. 

The choice never to name any of the characters, including the main character’s sister (played by Jo Herbert) who makes a handful of fleeting appearances, is an interesting one. The anonymity provides a sense of relatability and familiarity - this is a situation any one of us could find ourselves in, in any place and with anybody. However, it does make it difficult at times to truly relate to the characters or feel the true depth of their emotion.

It was perhaps a short line delivered by one of the men that stayed with me most - “I get to forget myself for a while”. This is really the premise of the whole show and how it explores the way in which humans use sex (or any other vice) to escape things we would rather forget. Yet, the act of physical intimacy can sometimes make buried things rise to the surface, allowing us to expose ourselves emotionally too with the loss of a parent, or a job, or an ex-partner. 

Delicate, funny and thought-provoking, this is a great watch for anyone who has ever felt lost and overwhelmed but relates to finding solace in the safely anonymous arms of another person.