Placebo
You might recall that Laura Eason's Sex with Strangers began and ended with the question, "Who are you?" That question begat other questions, like, do we ever really know our sexual partners? Melissa James Gibson (who, like Eason, is on the House of Cards writing staff) explores a similar question in her terrific new play, Placebo . Whereas Eason used writers to tell her story, Gibson uses a doctoral candidate, Louise, and sets her story against a backdrop of medical experimentation. Louise (Carrie Coon) is a research assistant for a doctor who is doing a double blind study of a drug that aims to boost women's libidos. Through Louise's interactions with one of the patients, Mary (Florencia Lozano), another researcher, Tom (Alex Hurt), and her boyfriend, Jonathan (William Jackson Harper), we come to see that all relationships are really double blind studies; you never quite know your partner or how s/he will affect you. (As the show art suggests, perhaps al...