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.
