Hugh Jackman, fresh from his song-and-dance triumph at Madison Square Garden a few months ago, returns to the New York stage in a beguiling and twisty new two-hander, Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, which opened Thursday at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre in an engrossing production that will run in repertory with a revival of August Strindberg’s The Creditors starring Liev Schreiber, Maggie Siff, and Justice Smith.
Jackman stars as the beloved author of best-selling novels who’s also a longtime and much-admired English professor at an unidentified “world-class college.” He’s a bit of a romantic rogue, with multiple failed marriages under his belt and a soon-to-be ex-wife who’s recently moved into the couple’s off-campus rental property. And when a shy 19-year-old first-year student named Annie (Ella Beatty) plops herself in the front row of his lecture hall, looking all googly-eyed at him and ready to quote her favorite passages from his novels at the drop of a batted eyelash, he soon finds himself in the throes of an illicit and rather skeevy affair.
Yes, Hannah Moscovitch’s one-act drama recalls those dated, misogynistic 20th-century novels by Philip Roth — but Jackman’s Jon Macklem is deceptively self-aware about all of the lines he is crossing by striking up a sexual relationship with one of his students, one who’s decades younger than him no less. Speaking of himself in the third person, he notes, “He knew that if one of his friends—colleagues—admitted to him they were…spending…time with—fucking—a nineteen-year-old student they met in one of their own intro classes, he knew he’d be…put off, both by the unseemliness of it, but also by the horrible predictability of it all.” And as he shares his story in an ever-charming confessional way, it’s clear that it’s the banal conventionality of his lapse that seems to gnaw at him as much as the fact of it. As if this great man of letters — who’s been ignoring his estranged wife to struggle over a deadly-sounding new manuscript about “turn-of-the-century lumberjacks” — should stoop to cliché.
Pacing the sparsely outfitted stage (designed by Brett J. Banakis and Christine Jones and lit by Isabella Byrd), Jackman oozes the kind of magnetism borne from being a movie star of decades’ standing — perfect for a best-selling author who inspires throngs of admirers to every book signing or lecture hall appearance. Jackman puts his onstage charisma to good use, addressing members of the audience directly and occasionally going off script while remaining in character. (“He liked to imagine why people arrive late,” he said as some tardy theatergoers took their seats several minutes into the show.) He makes Macklem the sort of literary luminary who would inspire a fandom that might lead to a multitude of student crushes — a fact that he introduces early on with an idea, borrowed from the ancient Greeks, about “the erotics of pedagogy.”
For her part, Beatty’s Annie is no mere Lolita-like nymphet. She’s the sort of fan girl who lingers just a little too long, unsure of what to say or do next, forcing him to make the first move. And yet she instinctively finds ways to make herself seen and to flatter her professor’s ego, as when she expresses disappointment in the everyday interests of her classmates: “I want the living version of the feeling I get when I read your work.” (In a striking contrast to her mentor, Annie addresses the audience in her rare monologues exclusively in the first person.) Beatty, who brought a very contemporary sensibility to the plucky servant Regina in this spring’s Lincoln Center revival of Ghosts, delivers an astonishingly nuanced performance as Annie — at first seeming more willing than eager to sleep with her literary idol, and later more cool and calculating than affronted when things go inevitably awry.
Indeed, this mousey little girl who’s initially introduced as a stock fairy-tale heroine in a striking red coat (costumes by Ásta Bennie Hostetter) emerges as an increasingly confident woman with more agency than we ever imagined. (She has a trick or two up those voluminous ruby-bright sleeves.)
Jackman and Beatty radiate a chemistry that’s as unsettling as it is genuine, with an eroticism that continually reminds us of the inappropriateness of their union. (We’re told more than once that the events take place in 2014, before the #MeToo movement erupted in full and score-settling force.) Director Ian Rickson stages their interactions to underscore the fundamental imbalance in their relationship, with Beatty’s Annie often seated in chairs at the edge of the stage as Jackman’s Macklem bloviates, like a student waiting her turn in the hallway outside the professor’s office. Moscovitch has crafted a drama that’s smart and sexy and unsettling — and that surprises us up to the final balloon-popping moments.
Thanks to a smart plan by Jackman and producer Sonia Friedman, both Sexual Misconduct and The Creditors are benefiting from a conscious effort to bring star-driven theater to the masses. (Take that, Othello, with its $800 ticket prices unleashing an army of green-eyed monsters.) While the Minetta Lane Theatre is an intimate space that seats just 391, a quarter of the tickets for each performance have been handed to community organizations for free and another quarter sell for just $35, either at the box office on the day of the show or via the TodayTix digital lottery app.
Whether at full price or as a lottery windfall, Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes is worth the effort. In fact, it’s one of the most gripping and entertaining dramas of the year. ★★★★★
SEXUAL MISCONDUCT OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES
Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 80 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through June 18 for $35 to $211
Culture Sauce 