Hugh Jackman seems to be a one-man dynamo working for accessibility in live theater. Last year, he teamed with producer Sonia Freeman on a project called Together that mounts shows in Audible Theater’s intimate Off Broadway space where half the seats are reserved either for community groups (at no cost) or for $35 same-day tickets. After reviving last year’s two-hander Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes earlier this spring, the star now teams with Sepideh Moafi (The Pitt) and Marianna Gailus on British playwright Ella Hickson’s New Born.
There is something thrilling about seeing Jackman and his co-stars up close, engaging with the audience in an almost one-on-one way. (At one point, Moafi sits downstage center, with her legs dangling off the edge, like a bestie who’s wandered into the restaurant and decides to pull up a chair.) But describing the performers as co-stars doesn’t quite fit. New Born is a series of monologues that seems unconnected to each other except perhaps in the shared theme of adults grappling with the complications of adult relationships.
Moafi plays a happily married graphic artist with a young son who meets a famous, unnamed British pop star and comes thisclose to adultery before thinking better of it. Then Gailus introduces herself as a bar maid in 19th-century Wyoming, emboldened by an encounter with Buffalo Bill Cody to confront a misogynistic ranch hand while quietly wooing his more accommodating buddy. Finally, Jackman plays a tree surgeon who radiates an easy sexual charm but seems incapable of long-term commitment even after the birth of his son.
He seems like he could be the brother of Jackman’s character in Sexual Misconduct, which perhaps explains why the actor called for a line in the middle of a recent performance. The other explanation, of course, is that director Ian Rickson’s production was rushed onto the stage with a sped-up rehearsal and preview period. These are all talented performers, but they haven’t quite found their footing with this material. Moafi’s attempts at the pop star’s British accent feel unsteady, while Gailus drifts in and out of a Wild West Wyoming drawl. And Jackman maintains an improbably easygoing magnanimity even as his character endures a series of life-altering calamities toward the end of his yarn. We get it; he’s a nice guy. He’s Hugh Jackman. But is it too much to ask the character to register some kind of emotion for what he’s experiencing? The script doesn’t demand very much of him as an actor, in the end, nor very much of us as an audience. The reversals and setbacks are delivered as if they’ve already been fully processed, the jagged edges all rubbed smooth after years of therapy or self-reflection.
Like the trees whose dead wood Jackman’s character diligently chainsaws, Hickson’s script could also use some pruning. She’s not averse to a narrative twist, but she never seems to want to linger for very long on what it might portend. That’s a shame, because at its best New Born captures familiar dynamics of human relationships — our addiction to scrolling on our phones, our willingness to turn a blind eye to the obvious in the name of self-preservation, our ability to allow Hugh Jackman’s charisma to distract us from his character’s shortcomings. ★★★☆☆
NEW BORN
Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through June 8 for $35 to $160