The Trouble With Men

Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber lead a pair of plays about master manipulators.

- JACKSON MCHENRY

WORK ABOUT professor-student relationships tends to focus on the allure of the younger party, but there’s something to the fantasy of the professor, too. He’s rumpled yet intelligent, out of step with the times but still insightful. Well meaning, in the case of a script like Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes, but unwilling to resist his urges. This is a useful figure on which to project a certain brand of hand-wringing about the trouble with men. The professor inevitably name-checks unwoke literature. He'll take advantage of a student, tricking himself into believing she’s exceptional. He runs to stay in shape, and he’s got veins that bulge across his biceps. Well, that last part is specifically because the professor here is played by Hugh Jackman, who brings all his Wolverine wattage to the West Village for a brief run in a two-hander by Hannah Moscovitch.

Jackman is the kind of performer who seems to be trailed by a spotlight wherever he goes, even in the modest space of the Minetta Lane Theatre, where he’s producing Sexual Misconduct with the British impresario Sonia Friedman as part of a venture called Together, which offers a low entry price and opportunities for free and rush tickets. Jackman’s professor, Jon, becomes fascinated by a shy 19-year-old student named Annie, played by Ella Beatty. Is she leading him on, or is that just his imagination? Moscovitch’s play poses familiar quandaries but arrives at pat conclusions about the psychological damage of having a mentor take advantage of a power imbalance. Her final twist, which you begin to anticipate early on, arrives with the dramatic force of an Uno reverse card.