Biographical readings of why actors choose certain roles are seductively unverifiable. 

As much as it sounds believable for a thespian to want to use their art to process what’s going on in their personal lives, it’s probably unfair to project what we know from gossip rags onto their career decisions, especially given the programmatic calculus that governs an oeuvre. 

And yet…

And yet…

And yet…

Hugh Jackman has amassed enough stage success to achieve carte blanche over what he can get funded, which allows us some assumption of agency over what material attracts him. 

Emphasis on attraction. 

Since his last foray on Broadway in The Music Man — which included a high-profile workplace affair with Sutton Foster that ended his longtime marriage —  he’s become a partner producer with Audible at Minetta Lane, programming and starring in two monologue-driven plays about…

Well, last year’s Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes is about a famous artist who cheats on his wife with a younger gal in his place of work…

And this year’s New Born is about a marriage that crumbles because he loses sexual desire for his wife…

Is it unfathomable to imagine Hugh Jackman popping over to a little downtown theater to work out his stuff…

Who among us, am I right?

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It may be worth mentioning…

As for the two companion pieces performed in rep at Audible next to Hugh’s outings:

2026’s What Happened Was… is about a will-they-won’t-they workplace romance…

And 2025’s Creditors is about marital infidelity…