An old story of seduction — or is it?
In tales of sexual impropriety between middle-aged professors and teenage students, there’s a typical image that comes to mind: a dark-haired man in a tweed blazer, perhaps bespectacled, in a leather chair surrounded by novels, most his own acclaimed works. And there’s a shy brunette with big eyes looking adoringly as she fumbles her way into seducing her mentor, both unaware of and completely in control of her youthful sexual appeal as well as her especially sharp mind and impressive writing skills — for her age.
The literary world is commonly where we think of these dynamics play out for clear reasons: there’s built-in drama involving fame, success, vulnerability and the blurring of professional and personal divisions. It provides a bounty of literary symbols and motifs to highlight elements of the relationship. And, of course, it often comes from personal experience. This is the community that forms the individuals who eventually write these stories for film, literature, and the theatre.
All of these factors come into play in Hannah Moscovitch’s newest work, “Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes,” receiving its world premiere at Tarragon Theatre under the direction of Sarah Garton Stanley, who previously collaborated with Moscovitch on “Bunny,” an acclaimed exploration of female sexuality and friendship which also happened to feature a student/professor relationship with literary themes. In fact, Moscovitch’s new play unfolds in an eerily conventional manner, sticking too close to the tropes for comfort.
Jon Macklem (Matthew Edison) is the definition of the male figure — 42, on the brink of divorce (his third), handsome, successful, drinks coffee until he can switch to scotch, he even wears a pocket square in his coat and crisp black athleisure sneakers. Annie (Alice Snaden) is a 19-year-old superfan — with bright blue eyes and brown hair that falls in big, soft curls — who sits front-row in Jon’s lectures, lives near him and crosses his path on her way to and from school. What unfolds seems inevitable, even as Jon resists falling into what he knows is a bad situation.
Through a series of lengthy monologues, we hear solely about Jon’s experience — his temptations, his vices, his internal conflict, his fascination, his pride at discovering Annie’s talents as a writer, his longing for his estranged wife. Snaden is overly bashful, uncomfortably eager to please and yet clear in her desire for her professor and favourite author. She appears in brief snippets, often under spotlight (lighting design by Bonnie Beecher), and usually in a red coat that entrances Jon — the same red that covers the set of an intentionally confining hallway: the red of Lolita’s sunglasses, or Jane Eyre’s haunted room, or Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter (set and costumes by Michael Gianfrancesco).
Edison revels in every selfhating moment he has in the spotlight, while Snaden’s performance is entirely directed toward her co-star; her eyes are a laser beam on him, while he looks out aimlessly over the heads of the audience watching them.
Beyond providing her signature sharp sense of humour (Annie recalls: “I asked my mom ‘what’s the difference between admiration and love?’ She said: ‘I don’t admire your father’ ”), the intrigue in Moscovitch’s script is in discovering why she’s playing with such traditional tropes, so out of character for the playwright who has written so frankly about female sexuality and taboos in “What a Young Wife Ought to Know,” “The Secret Life of a Mother,” and the aforementioned “Bunny.” And you’re right to trust Moscovitch; as she zooms ahead in years following the affair, she cleverly reveals a subtle shift in perspective that reverses the story we think we know.
Though she’s working in familiar stereotypes, Stanley’s production is careful not to overplay its hand, which helps in delivering its heart-rending twist. She and her actors achieve an impressive balance of portraying heightened versions of the youthful temptress and the confused, vulnerable man in a mid-life crisis that still feel truthful.
At one point, Jon calls Annie purely “an object of fiction,” but both transcend and are confined by the form they’re presented in, in a constantly shifting and surprising dynamic. And while Annie and Jon may be unsure of who’s real and who’s fiction, to the audience, they’re both firmly in Moscovitch’s hand. She’s the one who, ultimately, is in control of the narrative, which she increasingly makes clear in her characterizations. And that’s a powerful thing to witness.