Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, MTC, 11 March 2021 ***

 

THEATRE

Written by Hannah Moscovitch 

MTC Southbank Theatre, until 1 April 2021

Reviewer: Kate Herbert -reviewed on 11 March 2021

Stars:***

This review is published only on this blog. KH

Izabella Yena & Dan Spielman, photo Jeff Busby

 

Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s two-hander, Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, is an entertaining but superficial story that cries out for greater depth and complexity and ends on an unfinished note.

 

This Australian premiere at MTC, directed by Petra Kalive, features Dan Spielman as Jon, a thrice-married, successful author and much-admired university lecturer, and Izabella Yena as Annie, his 19-year-old student, fan, and eventually, lover. By embarking on this liaison, Jon risks his teaching position and his precarious marriage.

 

The play was written in the period of the #MeToo movement, but it fails to challenge any views – pro or con – of the relationship and it skims over the issue and the politics surrounding it, never penetrating the surface.

 

The story is almost all narrated by Jon, from his point of view and in the third person, but the young woman’s viewpoint is totally obscured, which reduces the impact of their secret interaction and its aftermath.

 

Spielman, as Jon, launches an irresistible charm offensive on both the audience and Annie, delivering some dialogue that shifts rapidly from arrogance and self-absorption to self-deprecating humour.

 

Yena is a warm and cryptic presence as Annie, despite having very little layering written into the character.

 

Moscovitch gives Annie no narration and very little dialogue within the scenes with Jon, so it is difficult to discern whether she went into the relationship with her eyes ‘wide shut’ and was completely aware of the potential explosiveness of the seduction.

 

This, it seems, is intentional, to avoid taking sides or simply slamming the older male in this unevenly weighted relationship between a university lecturer and his student.

 

In 2018, the world of media and social media lit up with the #MeToo movement and we were confronted with stories of offensive, institutional sexual abuse by men in positions of power, and some other stories of a less criminal nature.

 

When we were faced with online trolling, bullying and a murky mix of both proven and unsubstantiated attacks on both men and women, it was difficult to root out any kind of truth from the mud.

 

One must draw comparisons with David Mamet’s Oleanna, written much earlier, in 1992, a play about a female student accusing her male lecturer of sexual harassment. Mamet’s play is a much more penetrating analysis of the complexity of the relationship, the confusion of motives, the obscuring of truth and of the disastrous repercussions.

 

The disappointing and unsatisfying ending which avoids the argument from the woman’s point of view seems like a cop out. There will be opposing views so let’s see them. #MeToo was controversial so why not make the play controversial, too?

 

By Kate Herbert

PS: This was the first MTC production since theatres closed exactly 12 months ago. There was

no social distancing but the audience wore masks, and the auditorium was divided into four quadrants. Still, I was nervous on my first outing to a theatre with real people talking, coughing, walking, breathing, acting.