One night last month in the West Village, I had the pleasure of being nervous for Hugh Jackman. On stage at the Minetta Lane Theatre, the 56-year-old movie star and Broadway veteran appeared startlingly undefended and vulnerable. In character as a middle-aged university professor infatuated with his 19-year-old pupil, Jackman addressed the audience for a play called Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes with the lights up, as if helming a lecture full of shy students put on the spot; when one viewer sneezed during Jackman’s monologue, he paused to say bless you.
I fretted a few rows from Wolverine, more aware of my fellow audience members’ faces and cellphones than I’ve ever been at a New York show and acutely attuned to the fact that this all could go awry at any moment. Theater is always a contract between audience and performer, but years attending big Broadway shows have inured me to its fragility. At the Minetta, with just the commanding presence of Jackman and the lit audience at his feet, that contract felt thrillingly, temporarily exposed.
