Broadway Blogs - Oleanna & Circle Mirror Transformation and More...

In 1992, when David Mamet directed the premiere production of his controversial play, Oleanna, the name "Long Dong Silver" was still fresh in the minds of Americans who followed the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings.  Susan Faludi's bestseller, Backlash, was urging women to stand up to "The Undeclared War Against American Women" while Camille Paglia criticized the feminist movement for teaching women to see themselves as victims.  Take Back The Night rallies on college campuses encouraged women to publicly announce the names of men who have raped them, though the definition of what exactly constituted a rape was still being publicly debated.

Mamet's quick, 80-minute drama was ample kindling for the fire.  The first scene shows college student Carol in the office of her professor, John, voicing her frustration at not being able to understand his course.  John, who is up for tenure, offers help but is also preoccupied by phone calls regarding the home he and his wife are trying to buy.  In the second scene we find that Carol has filed a sexual harassment grievance against John, based on things he said and did during their first meeting.  She also makes vague mention of some "group" that supports her stance.  I'll leave it to the author to explain what happens in the third and final scene.

What gives Oleanna its heat is that we never see one character without the other.  We know nothing about them except for what is discussed in their meetings.  So is Carol misinterpreting John's intentions?  If so, is her perception of a threat against her less important than what he actually means?  Or is John making intentional vague suggestions to Carol that he can argue were misunderstood?  Is this group coaching Carol?  In a sexual harassment case that boils down to one person's word against the other, should the word of the alleged victim be given more credibility?

Oleanna (named for a Norwegian folk song about dreams of a perfect society that go awry) supplies no answers.  At least it didn't in 1992 when Mamet had Rebecca Pidgeon play Carol as a timid, frightened woman who tentatively grows more confident in each scene and William H. Macy play John as an unflappable professor who seems in perfect control of what he says and does.  The play successfully sparked debate, sometimes less than civil, among audience members.

But in the hands of Doug Hughes, who directs the current Broadway production, the play is more about a man who is defenseless against seeing his career and home life crumble because of accusations made against him, whether he is guilty or not.

Hughes sets Oleanna in the present (indicated by John's modern cell phone and laptop computer); a big mistake for a play where the ideas express are so much of their own time.  (These issues are certainly still important, but attitudes do shift.  Heck, even Susan Faludi went on to defend the blamelessness of individual males in Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man.)  But more damaging to the piece is the way he interprets the two characters.  As played by Julia Stiles, Carol is right from the start presented as a mature, confident and well-spoken woman who is simply unbelievable when she claims to be too stupid to understand John's class.  When she mentions her group, you might very well think she's the president of it.  John, as played by Bill Pullman, is first seen as being a bit flustered when he meets with Carol; his mind so preoccupied with family matters that it appears he might be talking off the top of his head without thinking.  In some moments Stiles' Carol seems to be guiding him to say things she later claims were inappropriate.

While both actors give fine performances, the interpretation of the characters kills the play's balance.  In a talkback held after the performance I attended, a show of hands had the audience nearly unanimously siding with John.  From what I've read on chat boards and have heard from others, overwhelming support of the professor seems to be a regular occurrence.

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