Review Roundup: SEXUAL MISCONDUCT OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES, Starring Ella Beatty and Hugh Jackman

Hugh Jackman and Ella Beatty star in Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes at Audible Theater. The US premiere of award-winning playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes takes us down the most slippery of slopes, keeping audiences questioning perspective throughout. Read the reviews!

Jesse Green, The New York Times: For an audience no less than an individual, the steep slope of powerful attraction is difficult to negotiate. Neither Macklem nor Annie (she’s given no last name) is sure-footed. He’s an overinflated balloon, blowing himself through life. She’s, well, 19. Beyond any other consideration — attraction, power, psychology, class — her absolute age, not the gap in their ages, is what Moscovitch wants us to consider. Annie is not yet a fully grown human; she barely has the emotional wherewithal to handle her impulses, to know which ones she can safely indulge.

Melissa Rose Bernardo, New York Stage Review: Ever since #MeToo became a hashtag and a movement, forever altering the way we frame, discuss, and spotlight sexual abuse and harassment, ask yourself: When was the last time—if ever—you found yourself sympathizing with an aggressor? Yet here we are off-Broadway at Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, listening to the confessions of famous author/rock-star college professor Jon Macklem, and we’re immediately charmed. Partly, it’s because we’re hearing the story almost entirely from his perspective—a surprising, and daring, choice.

Frank Scheck, New York Stage Review: The ensuing affair, complete with liaisons in cheap hotel rooms and the inside of Jon’s car, proves predictable in its complications, feeling very much like any number of dramas revolving around imbalanced sexual relationships. It’s only as the play progresses that it becomes something more original and interesting, with the power dynamics and eventually even the perspective shifting. That the playwright is a woman telling the tale from a man’s point of view provides a clue as to what makes Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes so distinctive, if not particularly weighty.

Jonathan Mandell, New York Theater: It is only in the last few minutes – and, really, only after the show has ended — that it sank in how much of what Jon does is despicable, and how much of what happens to Annie falls short of consensual. It seems plausible to me that playwright Hannah Moscovitch and director Ian Rickson deliberately set out to make Annie dull – the opposite of a seductress or a predator (predatress?) in the David Mamet mold — and even worked to emphasize the 30-year difference in the actors’ ages, achieving an uncomfortable father-daughter vibe.

Average Rating: 82.5%