Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman(Photo: Craig Schwartz)
A Battle of the Sexes and Reality vs. Fantasy
By Lauren Yarger
A young college student meets with her professor to ask for help understanding the course in which he’s flunking her. He agrees to give her extra tutoring. Beyond that, there is little room for agreement between the two on what really took place in what becomes a fierce power struggle in David Mamet’s Oleanna on Broadway.
Film star Julia Stiles (“The Bourne Identity,” “Mona Lisa Smile,” "Save the Last Dance,” among others) makes her Broadway debut as Carol, who appears unexpectedly at the office of her professor, John (Bill Pullman), to plead for her grade. She doesn’t understand anything, she tells him with a sad a vulnerable look, done so well by Stiles that you want to go up there an put an arm around her (though her rather chic outfits by Catherine Zuber aren’t accurate portrayals of the jeans and sweats most college women wear).
John is distracted and takes numerous calls from his wife and realtor about the impending purchase of his new house, but finally delays joining them at the closing to try to help Carol. He feels responsible for her not understanding what he has been teaching, so he offers her regular tutoring sessions, and even an A in the course, if she’ll give him a chance to explain the material. She feels vulnerable and offers to share something with him that she’s never told anyone, but just then the phone rings again and John goes to answer it.
What happens next is a he-said, she-said second meeting, as Carol files a complaint against John saying that he made inappropriate comments and advancements toward her during the meeting. She accuses him of being on a power trip and of mocking her and students like her who have struggled through economic and other hardships to get into college with his flip comments about the futility of education. And she asserts that he made inappropriate advances. He tries to reason with her to get her to retract the complaint, which will jeopardize his tenure and possibly result in the loss of his new house.
When the two meet again (although, why either would put themselves in such a vulnerable position is only answered by the playwright’s need for an ending scene), the empowered Carol, who has been bolstered in her suit by a supportive, but unidentified “group,” has successfully won her case before the tenure review board, who ruled in her favor and fired John. Now, she’s considering bringing additional charges. In a full circle, John, completely weak and powerless, admits that he hates Carol, and now it is he who tells her that he doesn’t understand anything.
It’s a disturbing play that raises lots of questions, and is noticeably devoid of the usual foul language in Mamet’s works. Some of the rapid fire, ping-pong type of dialogue for which he is famous appears, but in this production it falls flat, mostly because Stiles’ timing is off. It’s brief, though, and the rest of the dialogue is compelling, made even more intriguing by the fact that questions remain even though we were “in the room” with them and heard the entire conversation that started this whole mess.
Were Carol’s actions premeditated and did she manipulate John? Did she start out genuinely trying to get help, find a way to get even when he didn’t give her situation the attention it deserved? Is she psychotic? Is John guilty of the accusation or is he the unwitting victim? Or is it all just an inability of men and women to understand each other?
Doug Hughes directs the tense drama with violent scenes, though Pullman seems to do a lot of walking from place to place just to give him something to do. In addition, some automatic blinds on the office windows (set design by Neil Patel) laboriously open and close in between the scenes – an overstated and annoying metaphor to remind us that no one except the two characters knows what really is happening in the office. A masterful touch, though, is having the two actors remain distant during the curtain call. The spell of the play would have been broken with the holding of hands or smiling at each other during the bows.
The play, written at the height of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, still is relevant today and a "Take a Side" talk-back series has been held following the performance where panelists, many of them celebrities, and audience members discuss the various possibilities. This production comes to Broadway form Los Angeles where it had a run at the Mark Taper Forum. Oleanna, by the way, is the name of a 19th-century Norwegian Utopian society that failed.
See it through Jan. 3 at the Golden Theatre, 252 West 45th Street, NYC. For discounted tickets that support Masterwork Productions, click here.
Christians might also like to know:
• The show posts a Mature rating
• Lord’s name taken in vain
• Language
By Lauren Yarger
A young college student meets with her professor to ask for help understanding the course in which he’s flunking her. He agrees to give her extra tutoring. Beyond that, there is little room for agreement between the two on what really took place in what becomes a fierce power struggle in David Mamet’s Oleanna on Broadway.
Film star Julia Stiles (“The Bourne Identity,” “Mona Lisa Smile,” "Save the Last Dance,” among others) makes her Broadway debut as Carol, who appears unexpectedly at the office of her professor, John (Bill Pullman), to plead for her grade. She doesn’t understand anything, she tells him with a sad a vulnerable look, done so well by Stiles that you want to go up there an put an arm around her (though her rather chic outfits by Catherine Zuber aren’t accurate portrayals of the jeans and sweats most college women wear).
John is distracted and takes numerous calls from his wife and realtor about the impending purchase of his new house, but finally delays joining them at the closing to try to help Carol. He feels responsible for her not understanding what he has been teaching, so he offers her regular tutoring sessions, and even an A in the course, if she’ll give him a chance to explain the material. She feels vulnerable and offers to share something with him that she’s never told anyone, but just then the phone rings again and John goes to answer it.
What happens next is a he-said, she-said second meeting, as Carol files a complaint against John saying that he made inappropriate comments and advancements toward her during the meeting. She accuses him of being on a power trip and of mocking her and students like her who have struggled through economic and other hardships to get into college with his flip comments about the futility of education. And she asserts that he made inappropriate advances. He tries to reason with her to get her to retract the complaint, which will jeopardize his tenure and possibly result in the loss of his new house.
When the two meet again (although, why either would put themselves in such a vulnerable position is only answered by the playwright’s need for an ending scene), the empowered Carol, who has been bolstered in her suit by a supportive, but unidentified “group,” has successfully won her case before the tenure review board, who ruled in her favor and fired John. Now, she’s considering bringing additional charges. In a full circle, John, completely weak and powerless, admits that he hates Carol, and now it is he who tells her that he doesn’t understand anything.
It’s a disturbing play that raises lots of questions, and is noticeably devoid of the usual foul language in Mamet’s works. Some of the rapid fire, ping-pong type of dialogue for which he is famous appears, but in this production it falls flat, mostly because Stiles’ timing is off. It’s brief, though, and the rest of the dialogue is compelling, made even more intriguing by the fact that questions remain even though we were “in the room” with them and heard the entire conversation that started this whole mess.
Were Carol’s actions premeditated and did she manipulate John? Did she start out genuinely trying to get help, find a way to get even when he didn’t give her situation the attention it deserved? Is she psychotic? Is John guilty of the accusation or is he the unwitting victim? Or is it all just an inability of men and women to understand each other?
Doug Hughes directs the tense drama with violent scenes, though Pullman seems to do a lot of walking from place to place just to give him something to do. In addition, some automatic blinds on the office windows (set design by Neil Patel) laboriously open and close in between the scenes – an overstated and annoying metaphor to remind us that no one except the two characters knows what really is happening in the office. A masterful touch, though, is having the two actors remain distant during the curtain call. The spell of the play would have been broken with the holding of hands or smiling at each other during the bows.
The play, written at the height of the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings, still is relevant today and a "Take a Side" talk-back series has been held following the performance where panelists, many of them celebrities, and audience members discuss the various possibilities. This production comes to Broadway form Los Angeles where it had a run at the Mark Taper Forum. Oleanna, by the way, is the name of a 19th-century Norwegian Utopian society that failed.
See it through Jan. 3 at the Golden Theatre, 252 West 45th Street, NYC. For discounted tickets that support Masterwork Productions, click here.
Christians might also like to know:
• The show posts a Mature rating
• Lord’s name taken in vain
• Language
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