OLEANNA
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Oleanna, Mamet’s 1992 tragicomedy–bleak, blunt, and blistering, chilling and amusing in unsettlingly equal doses–might in part have been written to dramatize his essay’s thesis. Of the play’s multiple levels, the most sensational–the one that will “get the asses in the seats,” as the sleazy movie producer says in Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow–is its provocative portrait of the sexually charged showdown between John, a college teacher in his mid 40s, and Carol, a 20-year-old student who comes to him for help in his course, which she’s failing. Though John quickly diagnoses the cause of Carol’s intellectual dimness–“No one thinks you’re stupid. . . . You’re angry. Many people are”–he fails to comprehend how deep and dangerous her anger is. Moved by her tearful frustration, he offers words of caring, a reassuring pat, a slightly ribald joke, and a promise of private tutoring. Faster than you can say “Clarence Thomas,” he’s up on charges of elitism, sexism, sexual harassment, and–after he loses his temper and tries to shake some of his sense into Carol–attempted rape.
Dragging Clarence Thomas’s name in may strike some as offensive and others as irrelevant at this point–though when Oleanna premiered on Broadway a year ago, Anita Hill’s testimony was fresh in the public memory. But Mamet’s depiction of Carol and John’s disastrous “negotiations” might well be used as evidence that perhaps Thomas was innocent of sexual harassment. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Thomas–or John–is any less of a self-important asshole.
Under Michael Maggio’s direction, Oleanna operates on another level too: the sheer dramatic suspense generated by the clash of two personalities whose conflicting aims and confusing quirks are gradually revealed through their language–distinctively stylized as usual in Mamet, though far less glib and coarse than in his earlier plays. Oleanna is nerve-jarringly packed with unfinished thoughts and fractured phrases, interrupted as often by the jangling of John’s phone as by the characters’ incoherence (which paves the way for Carol to misread John’s overtures). Daniel Mooney’s opening-night handling of John’s dialogue was a bit stiff, at least to ears accustomed to the fluidity with which actors like Joe Mantegna and W.H. Macy deliver Mamet’s special rhythms. But Mooney has John’s whiny tone, practiced classroom charm, and shallow sensitivity down pat.
