Oleanna
by David Mamet
The Mark Taper Forum(135 N. Grand Avenue, Los Angeles 90012)
A production of Center Theatre Group
Date of reviewed performance: July 9, 2009
Cast
John - Bill Pullman
John - Bill Pullman
Carol - Julia Stiles
The title, Oleanna, comes from a Norwegian folk song in which Oleanna is a blissful, safe, utopian version of one's homeland. A place where no harm would dare come. So it is quite fitting that Mamet here descends upon the American idea of Oleanna and tears it apart at the seams. This is a play that was written on the heels of the Senate hearings on Clarence Thomas regarding allegations made by Anita Hill. For this reason, Oleanna is often thougth of as Mamet's "sexual harassment play" - and unfair label because at its core it is untrue. Sure, there are allegations of sexual harrassment made within this play. There are allegations of much more than that made within this play. But it isn't a "sexual harrassment play;" it is work dissecting how easily the American dream can be twisted into a personal nightmare.
David Mamet, who has never been afraid of walking directly into a crossfire, brings us a series of incendiary scenes involving only two onstage characters: John, the well-meaning college professor and Carol, the seemingly overwhelmed student. In a brief first act, John and Carol have an impromptu meeting in John's office. John (Bill Pullman) is on the receiving end of a litany of phone calls about his new home he is attempting to close escrow on. This disrupts the meeting and one can see Carol (Julia Stiles) becomes increasingly frustrated as their meeting about her inability to understand his lectures on the pointlessness of higher education rolls on. John, however, sees something familiar in Carol and one gets the impression that he feels, for the first time in many years, that he might actually be able to make a difference in the life of a student. He challenges her to think, to bust pre-conceived ideas and he comforts her when it all becomes too much for her to bear. The result of which is a second act that introduces Carol is a whole new light. There are now the above-mentioned accusations, reviews of the professor by the college's tenure board and the loss of his beloved new house. And if that were all that fell apart in the life of the professor over what he had intended as a kind gesture, it would be tragic. The characters, however, continue to twist themselves and each other until it all boils over into a final, violent explosion.
Pullman's John is full of uncertainty, about himself and others. He has a difficult time standing up to his wife and realtor in their unending phone calls. His halting speech and baffled nature end up being no match for Carol's streaming accusations, despite her own limited vocabulary. This John (unlike other productions) is not the entitled elitist he is accused of being by Carol and her nefarious "group." He is someone who struggled to get where he his, is uncertain he even deserves it now and, despite statement to the contrary, feels it could all be wiped away at any moment. And then it is. He is a character to be pitied, even as he is difficult to identify with. I have never tried to picture Bill Pullman as a stage actor, but I was impressed with this interpretation of John and the neurotic vulnerability he wrapped the character up in.
Julia Stiles has never been a favorite of mine in general because she habitually delivers lines in way that says I'm so intelligent, that I will only speak in monotone. And thus was the case for the entire first act and some of the second act of this performance. Often, she delivered her lines in the same way a second year theater student delivers Shakespeare: with clear authority in tone and yet no apparent knowledge of what the blocks of sentences actually mean. She really only seemed to break out of this pattern and assume an actual character about midway through the second act, when the scene between Carol and John became quite heated and minor violence began to ensue. But when she finally gets there it is something to behold and maybe even worth waiting for. The final showdown between Carol and John is so shattering that it left the audience in stunned silence and even Stiles seemed to have trouble shaking it off after the curtain call.
Perhaps part of Stiles's difficulty in getting into her character was the bizarre blocking Stiles and Pullman were required to do throughout this production. The Mark Taper Forum is a thrust stage, which by it's nature requires its actors do some walking in semi-circles - but the blocking for this show took it to a nearly dizzying degree. Most of it was not a benefit to the level of intensity of the scene or aid in characterization. If anything, it looked like busy work. If the blocking wasn't distracting enough, each scene was separated by a large set of automated blinds loudly raising and closing between every scene. The blinds practically deserved their own credit in the program.
Note unrelated to the actual production: I was sitting stage left, on the third row. If anyone knows the woman who was sitting directly behind me - whose phone went off loudly during an important moment (it took her forever to cut it off) AND who then had a loud conversation en espanol during the all-important final scene that went on so long I had to turn around and give her the hairy eyeball THREE TIMES - please ask her stay at home and watch telemundo from now on.
Oleanna is directed by Doug Hughes and has a running time of barely ninety minutes.
Oleanna:
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