Review of Oleanna from the Houston Chronicle

Review: ‘Oleanna’ explores the idea of emotional safety,

by Wei-Huan Chen July 27, 2018

David Mamet’s “Oleanna” debuted in 1992, one year after the Anita Hill hearings, six years before the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and 25 years before the era of #MeToo. Look at us now. Look at how everything, and nothing, has changed.

Back in 1992, the country was embroiled in the “culture wars,” a partisan, country-wide debate over topics such as abortion, homosexuality, the Confederate flag and gun violence. “Political correctness” was by then a household term, often wielded by the conservative right to describe how liberals and intellectuals advanced self-victimization and affirmative action and policed our everyday English in the name of sensitivity.

Twenty-five years later, the Landing Theatre stages “Oleanna,” starring Marty Blair and Skyler Sinclair, at 14 Pews through Aug. 11, at a time when the same culture wars have cycled back into existence. Blair plays a university professor, John, who talks and sweats like he’s a dude in a Mamet play. Sinclair plays the less-well-written Carol, an undergraduate seeking academic help.

After Carol claims she’s too stupid to understand the material, John cheers her up and says she’s not. He says he “likes” her and will help her with her grades if she promises to come back to his office. She doesn’t think it will help, and breaks down, close to tears. John places a hand on her back.

In act two, Carol, it turns out, has written up the previous events into a damning report of sexual harassment, which threatens John’s tenure. The audience sees that she’s twisted the events of act one into something that, read out of context, sounds worse than it was. Here is Mamet’s critique of PC culture via a portrait of a woman who utilizes the image of victimhood to take down an honest, if gruff, man.

But “Oleanna” isn’t partisan. Authorial opinion — from a right-wing, straight, white, male 70-year-old — feels elusive. John doesn’t get off easy. He’s annoying, masculine, condescending, hot-tempered and, depending on the actor’s performance, a bit of a creep. The play functions not as a statement but rather as a mirror to the audience’s personal views, possibly riling men and women in different ways, just as it did in 1992.

After all, look at how the New York Times review of the original production sounds now. Of Mamet, theater critic Frank Rich said, “one (cannot) glibly reject his argument against fanatics like Carol who would warp the crusade against sexism, or any other worthy cause, into a reckless new McCarthyism that abridges freedom of speech and silences dissent.”

Statements like these are less about “Oleanna” and more about what the speaker thinks about such issues. The Landing Theatre’s production, for instance, starts out feeling almost opposite to Rich’s interpretation, more in line with a feminist “Get Out” than a right-wing attack on #MeToo. Sinclair crosses her arms, a universal sign of self-guardedness. She moves a little away when the man huffing in front of her leans in her direction. Director Sophia Watt gives us signs of Carol’s discomfort, aided by scenic designer Afsaneh Aayani’s seeming-benign yet ultimately-claustrophobic office.

John is not purely a villain. Blair is exceptional here. He plays him as Woody Allen-esque, with prim gesticulations that suggest a man obsessed with himself and his ideas. As sweat trickles from his sideburn to his cheek, you wonder what makes him sweat.

Here is where the production says something that the play never did, honing in on the idea of emotional safety. It asks us, through Sinclair’s body language, whether the definition of safety should be defined by the perpetrator or the victim. “It’s not for you to say,” Carol tells John, calling him a “yapping little fool.” By act three, John’s shirt is untucked and vest-less, while Carol sports a sweater over her previous outfit (Krystal Marie Uchem is keen on character transformation with her costume design).

The costume change suggests a shift in power, which today would feel cathartic, except the script fights back. Mamet’s writing feels forced here, placing Carol in a room and giving her words that don’t seem honest or natural. Yet it’s precisely his ambivalence toward sexual harassment that makes “Oleanna” more complex than a traditional issue play.

A better, more modernized script about sexual harassment would have, perhaps, a little sense of satire or irony, or at least introduce more thought-provoking ideas about where the line is drawn. Carol appears to cross a line in her “crusade” that today doesn’t seem so unreasonable. John crosses a line that everyone would agree is bad behavior, but what about all the other actions that led to it? By having the benign actions lead to something terrible, the audience is given a pass. We don’t need to judge the microaggressions on their own terms.

Mamet, in the end, fails to be truly self-conscious of the failings of powerful “smart” men. Watt almost wrangles a newfound sense of sincerity out of the script, however, while Sinclair wrestles with a character that’s never given the respect she deserves. The result is a strange bird of a production, a 25-year-old take on sexual harassment that has aged strangely but not altogether terribly. “Oleanna” is more of a social experiment than a statement of any sort. It would be a necessary ticket purchase if we weren’t already bombarded with similar stories in real life.

Broadway World Review of Oleanna

BWW Review: OLEANNA provokes at The Landing Theatre Company

The Landing Theatre Company decided to revive David Mamet's 1992 treatise on political correctness and the war of the sexes - OLEANNA. It could not come at a more opportune time. Rather than age to irrelevance, the script seems downright prescient in the wake of the #metoo movement which has sparked conversations, debates, and concerns over the state of men in power and women equalizing their role in the equation. It is an important piece of theatre that deserves to be seen again, and it gets a suitably strong resurrection at 14 Pews.

OLEANNA is a two character play that features a college professor and a female student. The entire play takes place inside the educator's office, and only consists of three scenes. The first part sets up everything - it is a decidedly strange meeting where the professor seems distracted, but at the same time trying to console a student who feels she is not doing well in understanding his class. Nothing overt seems to happen, but the cadence seems off and the audience senses a disconnect between the two. In the following two scenes we find out the student feels like she was harassed by the professor, and the issues get more and more complicated minute by minute.

Back in 1992 OLEANNA was a meditation on the political correctness sweeping through higher education in that era. Today it is destined to be part of the continuing discussion of how men and women relate in professional settings. Who has the power? Who is misusing it? Are either of them justified in the assumptions they are making? Famed film critic Roger Ebert observed that when he saw the play in its original run there were literally fights in the auditorium between people at intermission and after the show. I don't think that will change in 2018. OLEANNA may actually spark more debate than it ever has.

The Landing Theatre Company is staging this one at 14 Pews high up in the Heights. It is an uncomfortably intimate space that consists of just over a dozen rows of seats, so you will be close to the action no matter where you sit. The staging is tight, and the lighting is simple and effective - some overhead shafts aimed at the office and an office desk lamp. Technically this one has everything it needs to work. Krystal Marie Uchem has made interesting choices in costuming allowing the professor to be suitably upscale and the student a grungy counterpoint. We see the divisions straight away.

Marty Blair and Skyler Sinclair are the only ones onstage, and they are all you need. In the first scene he is imperious, she is mousy, and they both frustrate the audience with their staccato delivery of overlapping lines that diffuse sense and logic. He's smarmy and comes on far too strong, and she seems confused, helpless, and unable to articulate ideas. Those tables turn quickly throughout the evening, and both actors handle the shifts in power ably. Blair is likeable enough to keep us off balance, and Sinclair proves her mouse can roar. Together they duet and spar and bring OLEANNA to life. They make the dense dialogue seem effortless and handle the material well. Audiences will be provoked by them both, and that is how it should be. Sophia Watt's direction has brought out two fine performances at just the right pace to keep things taut and immersive.

OLEANNA demands to be seen again, and The Landing Theatre Company has just the right chops to bring it to life at 14 Pews. It feeds off the intimate space, and they have found two actors who have the energy to deliver the message at the right pitch to make the audience squirm. You may not be entirely comfortable, but you will be riveted and surprised at how things you thought you knew change and twist as they are examined. This is exactly what a great night at the theatre should be.

OLEANNA plays at 14 Pews through August 11th. Tickets can be purchased through the link http://www.landingtheatre.org/oleanna .

Write up of Oleanna in Culture Map Houston

MAMET'S #METOO MOMENT

David Mamet's provocative power play of he said, she said shakes up Heights theater

By Joe Leydon

8.3.18 | 4:46 pm

Don’t believe everything you’ve heard — or might hear — about Oleanna.

Still potent and provocative 26 years after its off-Broadway premiere, David Mamet’s live grenade of a drama about miscommunication and escalating power plays frequently recalls the oft-quoted observation of legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans: “There are three sides to every story — yours, mine, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.”

The complexities and contradictions of this tightly coiled two-character play are smartly illuminated by the exceptional Landing Theatre Company production on view at 14 Pews. And the lead performances by Marty Blair and Skyler Sinclair are so precisely and meticulously balanced by director Sophia Watt that some members of the audience might experience a bracing form of whiplash as their sympathies repeatedly shift while witnessing what can only be described as a war of words.

But keep in mind: Yes, it’s been frequently described — by critics, audiences, and even the advertising campaign for the 1994 movie adaptation directed by Mamet — as a drama “about” sexual harassment. It isn’t. Or, rather, it’s not just about that.

Things begin simply, ominously: While John (Blair), a self-absorbed college professor, is focusing his thoughts on purchasing a new house and pleasing a tenure committee, he takes far too long to notice the desperation of a student who has come to his office for guidance. Carol (Sinclair), a young woman charged by alternating currents of impatience and obsequiousness, fears she is “stupid” (her word, not his) and knows she is failing. She has tried very hard to grasp the finer points of John’s lectures, to fully understand the nuances of his textbook. But she just doesn’t get it. And if she can’t get it, she knows she will flunk out of college.

At first, John is too distracted to give her his full attention. And even when he begins to listen closely, he is too full of himself, even in his moments of self-deprecating humor, to avoid coming off as condescendingly paternalistic. She gets hysterical. He takes hold of her, briefly, to calm her down. She recoils. He offers to give her private tutorials. He says he “likes” her. They part company.

A few days later, it becomes very clear that each of them has a very different take on what occurred while they were alone together.

Act Two begins after Carol has filed an official grievance with the tenure committee, accusing John of sexual harassment. As proof, she cites his “pornographic” anecdotes. His offer to meet her again in private. And his attempt to embrace her.

John is flabbergasted, and more than a little frightened. Because of her complaint, he risks losing his new house, his tenure — and maybe even his job. He insists she has misinterpreted his words and deeds. But she will not be moved. Dogmatic and determined, she reports that, after consulting with her “group,” she has decided that John must make a public confession of his misdeeds as an elitist, a racist, a sexist, and a power-tripping authoritarian. One thing leads to another, lines are crossed, and Oleanna builds to a climax that is at once shocking and inevitable.

Back in 1994, when I visited the Boston location — ironically, a former mental hospital transformed into a faux university — where he was filming Oleanna, Mamet told me he was stunned by the intensity of the response to his play during its initial staging in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and later off-Broadway. “People used to get into fistfights in the lobby,” he says. “And couples who came on a date would leave screaming at each other in different taxi cabs.”

What likely sparked many of those clashes, Mamet conceded, was the hot-button issue of sexual harassment. He had begun work on the play years earlier, set it aside — and then retrieved it from a file drawer in 1991 after Anita Hill delivered her accusatory testimony during the confirmation hearings for future Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. In the wake of that nationally televised real-life drama, Mamet thought: “Wait a minute. I must be on to something here.”

And yet, Mamet quickly added, his completed play actually employs sexual harassment primarily as what Alfred Hitchcock used to call a “MacGuffin,'' a plot device that is introduced only to get the characters involved in something far more important. Like so many of his other plays — such as Glengarry Glen Ross, the one that netted him a Pulitzer Prize — Oleanna is all about power. Specifically, “It’s about people who have power, who think it's their God-given right,” Mamet says. “Who think that power makes them wise, and power makes their decisions correct, and people who dispute that are misguided. People who have power tend, even in their benignity, to be oppressive toward those who want equality.”

Director Sophia Watt agrees. For the most part.

“I can certainly see how the element of sexual harassment could be viewed as a MacGuffin,” she says during a recent interview. “I think in this current day and age, I was wary of completely discarding that as an element of the play, because I think sexual harassment fits very nicely into the dynamics of power. It’s, in many ways, an extension of someone exerting power over someone else.

“But I do think that, structurally, the play does not function if you make it entirely about sexual harassment. It’s not set up that way.”

Watt believes that — again, like many other Mamet plays — Oleanna deals with characters who use language as offensive and defensive weaponry, but at the same time often struggle to find language capable of expressing what they feel.

“This is particularly true in a university setting,” she says, “because I think in most cases, the student — Carol is obviously the exception — doesn’t feel like they have the ability to say ‘I’m uncomfortable, could we leave the door open?’ Or, ‘I’m uncomfortable, please don't touch me.’ Because that teacher has the power of their grade over them.

“I think it’s an interesting examination of what happens when someone comes forward and says, ‘I was uncomfortable.’ Do we have the language for that? I think we don't really yet, and certainly didn’t in ’92, to a full extent. So, that was something that interested me, too. In a play about language, how language failed these two characters, because I think it fails them again, and again, and again.”

And here’s the really tricky part:  Carol repeatedly refers to a “group” consisting of peers, advisers and, presumably, legal counsel. These people — never seen, although their influence is keenly felt — have helped Carol find the words to express her rage and frustration. (“People always are noting how incredibly articulate someone can become when they get a lawyer,” Mamet pointedly remarked in 1994. “That way, you get someone to articulate your inchoate feelings.”) But are they the right words? Is it the precise language?

“Skylar Sinclair and I had a lot of discussions about that,” Watt says. “We wanted to walk a fine line, because to have her simply be kind of a puppet of this shadowy organization felt, in some ways, unfair to the character. She says these things, so we want to assume she has a certain amount of agency. At the same time, though, this is where I think we became really interested in where language fails people.” As Watt sees it, Carol told her confidants something on the order of, “I had this incident, and it made me really uncomfortable.” Trouble is, “The only way people know how to look at his actions toward her is through the lens of ‘Well, was it rape? Was it that level of assault, or was it not?’

“The language they give her doesn’t fit the event itself.” But what would be the right language? What really did happen? And should we assume that justice or something like it is served in the play’s final moments? To quote another noted playwright — Oscar Wilde, in The Importance of Being Earnest — “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.” Watt fully expects audiences will consider those questions in polite discussions, or heated arguments, as they depart 14 Pews after the conclusion of Oleanna. So far, there have been no fistfights.

http://houston.culturemap.com/news/arts/08-03-18-david-mamet-oleanna-14-pews-the-landing-theatre-company/