Oleanna

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

On the phone, he’s all business, Impatient with his wife over a meeting concerning the house he wants to buy. He’s busy and can’t leave the office right now. A nervous mousy girl sits uneasy in a chair waiting for him. So begins David Mamet’s brilliant and controversial play Oleanna playing at The Avenue Theater.

Elgin Kelly and Dan O’Neill in Oleanna now showing at the Avenue Theater.

Under the sharp and insightful direction of Nick Sugar, Dan O’Neill and Elgin Kelly unravel the twisted lives of John and Carol.

A University professor, John looks forward to celebrating his promotion for tenure at an unspecified university in an unidentified part of the country. Mamet deliberately kept that aspect undisclosed. It doesn’t matter. It could be anywhere as the issue has taken place in many different places under the watchful, and not so watchful, eye of the numerous universities.

O’Neill captures John with sharp edges, uptight as an e string on a violin. Crisp, sharp, intelligent with an expertise in education.

Kelly plays into the nervous undergraduate student, Carol, who appears to be out of her league economically and socially. Not only does she feel she doesn’t belong, she feels stupid. She just doesn’t understand John’s class. She’s read his book. He talks about “responsibility to the young”, but she doesn’t understand the meaning. She’s taken copious notes, but she doesn’t understand and wants John’s help.

Consumed over his new house, and getting out of the office, he wants to help, but it is clear from the beginning neither one is listening to the other. Both preoccupied with their individualized stance wrapped snugly around them to protect? To isolate? So wrapped up in her thoughts of being stupid, she can’t or won’t take the time to listen to him. Consequently, interruptions take place on both sides. There’s a wanting to intervene. To call time out. To say to them both “take a deep breath, quiet your busy mouths and listen.” When actors invoke this kind of response with their characters, you know you stand on the brink of magical interpretation.

Wanting to help her, the sharp edges soften. He warms up to her, admitting to feeling stupid himself at one time, but he fought to overcome it. Overcome with compassion, or sensing an opportunity to strike the vulnerable?

Act two begins with John’s sharp confidence melting around the edges. “I love teaching,” he tells Carol, begging her to tell him what wrong he has done her. She filed a sexual harassment charge against him with the tenure committee. He wants her to retract the complaint. Reading from her report, he stammers, “He said if I stayed alone in his office he’d change my grade to an A.” Although still mousy around the edges, Carol emerges with confidence to her mousy continence, standing up to him.

From all appearances the play seems to be about sexual harassment, but the real underlying issue has to do with false accusations. False accusations can be as harmfully dangerous as a real crime. No matter how ludicrous, people believe what they want to believe. Once an accusation has been levied, once it has been believed, the accused stands in the awkward position of little defense. Was he really coming on to her? Did he promise to give her an A if he stayed in his office? Did she create the scenario to lessen the sting of self-imposed stupidity?

When Oleanna opened in New York, fistfights broke out between theatregoers following the performance over who was right. So brilliantly written, and magnificently played by O’Neill and Kelly, the truth shadowboxes between the personas of student and professor. Did she set him up getting support from an identified group? Did Carol plan this attack? Did she and the group have a vendetta against John from the beginning? Did she really not understand the course, concocting a scheme to cover the fact she was failing? Or did he deliberately come on to her under the guise of comforting her insecurities?

As a result, John not only loses his tenure, he loses his job, most definitely loses the house, and quite possibly his marriage.

Even though the court officers asked her not to see him, she agrees to meet with John in Act III. He wants her to hear him out. She sticks to her guns insisting he was negligent. These are facts, not accusations. At the same time she hints strongly there is a possibility the group could withdraw the complaint from the tenure committee. The mousy little girl now holds the power in her hand. Is this what it’s about, power?

Michael R. Duran designed the sedate professor’s office with its formal curves and comfortable chairs for students to confer. Costuming details designed by Lisa Murray plays directly into the mysterious forces at play. Carol, although neatly dressed, demonstrates she is not a fashion plate on campus, clinging to a conservative point of view covering her insecurities. That could be a set up too. Wonder what she wears to her group? John’s wears the “professor-ish” garb of brown suit with professor-ish dignity until his dignity lies flattened on the floor.

Richard Pegg’s lighting design pokes sharp spikes into the compelling and breath taking repartee.

Did she ruin a completely innocent professor’s career? Did he ask for it by overstepping his bounds?

If his name is John, and her name is Carol where did the name Oleanna come from?

A Norwegian violinist, Ole Bull, fell in love with Pennsylvania. In 1852 he bought a piece of land calling it Oleana where Norwegians could live in utopia. The venture failed. Several lost a great deal of money. The site of this Promised Land is now the Ole Bull National Park. An Oleanna refers to naive unrealistic, unattainable dream of perfection.

In today’s world where accusations fly wingless into the faces of every aspect of our society, Oleanna maintains a strong and vital part of theatre significance as relevant today as when the play was first written. Power struggles play out on all levels some with legitimate claims, some with false accusations wallowing in the depth of consequences.

The Avenue’s production of Oleanna is a definite Do Not Miss. There have been no reported fist fights, but it definitely stirs the brain cells for discussion.