Sometimes, writing a play can be therapeutic for the playwright. It appears this might be the case for Governor General’s Award winning playwright Hannah Moscovitch with her play Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes. In it, she repeats a plot line seen in her 2016 play Bunny (recently reviewed here) when a first year college student has an affair with her married professor. This 2020 play, recipient of the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award for English language drama, centres around college professor and successful novelist Jon (Vincent Gale) and the attraction he feels towards his student Annie (Sara Canning) that tips inevitably into an affair. The 80 minute two-hander makes the interesting choice to have the story told from Jon’s point of view; he is our narrator and quite honest in his relaying of his growing feelings for Annie, although also with a large dollop of self-justification alongside his self-loathing for bedding a teenager.

Ably directed by the Belfry’s AD Michael Shamata, the two actors here offer strong and effective performances. Belfry regular Vincent Gale in particular impresses with his honest narration of losing control of the situation, but also revelling in his conquest of a beautiful young woman. Canning also impresses in her Belfry debut. Her Annie shows her falling under the spell of an author and professor she admires, to the point of seduction. When Jon accuses her of coming on to him, Canning’s response is one of baffled vulnerability, moments before Jon moves in for a kiss and the affair begins. The production has a simple but effective set consisting of a painted backdrop featuring what we imagine is text from Jon’s writing, and a revolve that swiftly moves set pieces on and off stage. Both set and costumes, which also work well, are designed by Shawn Kerwin, with sound design/composition by Tobin Stokes and lighting by Leigh Ann Vardy.

There is a twist in this somewhat familiar tale, that made me think back to David Mamet’s controversial 1992 play Oleanna. Mamet’s play, also focused on an encounter between a student and her professor in which the student charges her professor with sexual harassment, leads to a dark finale when the professor, about to lose his house and job, physically assaults the student. Here, Moscovitch’s ‘revenge’ for Annie is a softer one, but perhaps no less effective; years later (spoiler alert) she has become a successful playwright and she visits Jon in order to give him a copy of her next play. You guessed it…it’s the play we’ve been watching, consciously telling the story from his point of view. And it is this twist in the tale that affected me most; Moscovitch could obviously have chosen to tell her story from Annie’s perspective but she instead chooses to focus on Jon. There is something moving in this choice for me, to enter into Jon’s experience of the affair and to try to understand what it was, how it happened and what it meant to him. This feels like a radical form of empathy to me, and ultimately quite a feminist act. The war between the sexes continues in the age of #MeToo, but Moscovitch, in her usual intelligent way, skews the perspective to allow us to better see and understand how sexual misconduct of the middle classes works on men as well as the women they choose to love, and then leave. On until April 24th with tickets available for pay-what-you-can prices at https://www.belfry.bc.ca. Recommended.