By SHARON EBERSON
Brace yourself for Oleanna. The David Mamet drama is not a pleasant diversion on a hot summer’s day, nor is it meant to be. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and provocateur aims to challenge beliefs we may hold to be self-evident, often on the most infuriating, offensive terms – his terms.
The current Kinetic Theatre production of Mamet’s Oleanna is all that, without a net.
The intense, often harrowing 75-minute two-hander also is a tour-de-force vehicle for veteran actor David Whalen, as a college professor accused of sexual harassment and other transgressions, pushed to the edge by Mei Lu Barnum, a recent Point Park University graduate, as his student and accuser.
of David Mamet’s Oleanna. (Image: Rocky Raco)
Directed by Andrew Paul, the drama unfolds as an insidious provocation, aimed at anyone who sees such accusations as always clear cut, in either direction.
Oleanna – the title comes from a Norwegian folk song about utopian ideals – debuted in 1992, a year after Anita Hill’s testimony about future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, putting sexual harassment and consent in a harsh, public spotlight. It would be 14 more years before we first saw the hashtag #MeToo.
The context in 2024 terms is essential to how the play lands.
With all that has transpired in the play’s wake – justice for victims, the rise of cancel culture, generational divides, warring ideologies about political correctness and wokeness – we can see Mamet’s Oleanna as both prescient and cunning.
In very short order, the play wages a he said/she said battle royale of perceptions.
“To provoke is my job,” says Whalen’s John of being a teacher, unaware that he is about to have the tables turned.
The professor, shocked to his core by the turn of events, would appear to be a surrogate for Mamet. In recent years, the playwright, screenwriter, novelist, poet and children’s author has become notorious as a vehement critic of “the woke agenda.”
As John, Pittsburgh native Whalen at first comes across as self-aggrandizing and aloof. He is awaiting final judgment on his tenure, already announced but not yet signed, sealed and delivered. When a student, Barnum’s Carol, walks into John’s office without an appointment, he also is distracted as he answers a succession of calls about buying a new house.
Carol arrives as a raw nerve of insecurities and concern about her apparent failing grade in John’s class. We learn – through much fast-paced, often interrupted discussion – that John has authored a book that denigrates the ideals of higher education for all, calling it “systematic hazing,” and generally dismissing the ritualism of academia.
The book is required reading in a class packed with students who have paid a hefty price to earn their degrees.
Seeing Carol reduced to an apparent sputtering mess, John warms to appeasing and calming her. He opens up about his own difficulties on the way to his current position, and offers her private sessions, to help her raise her grade. He closes his office door, telling her this offer of help, which she protests as being against the rules, can be just between them.
When Carol appears to be having a panic attack, John attempts to comfort her by patting her on the back. She recoils from his touch – a hint of what is to come.
John is about to be slapped with a complaint that threatens his tenure, and everything he has worked for.
The power shift is made palpable by performances that illustrate how actors can unlock previously hidden depths of character. Much also hinges on the impact of Mamet’s taut, fierce dialogue, and here the duo is right on target, as Whalen and Barnum serve-and-volley without missing a beat.
As Barnum’s Carol morphs shocklngly before his eyes, Whalen’s professor becomes ever more insecure and solicitous. John’s fate comes to rest in the hands of the unyielding student, who seems to enjoy putting the screws to the authority figure who once held her own academic fate in his hands.
No matter how much you may want to empathize with the female student and her academic struggles, her transformation is such a one-eighty, you can’t help but feel that John has been in her crosshairs from the start.
Was this entrapment? Has she been manipulated by her oft-mentioned “group,” which would seem to be dictating her motives? Is she the leader of this unnamed group? Does she return to the professor’s office alone, while her complaint is being litigated, to further provoke him?
These questions, and others, are left for audience members to decide, to dissect, and most of all, to discuss.
The meetings between professor and student take place within a well-appointed office, designed by Johnmichael Bohach, in the University of Pittsburgh’s Rauh Studio theater. The trappings speak to the professor’s fastidiousness and perhaps that he has been held in high regard by the college. It is of no small consequence that the play’s venue is in a venerable campus building.
Also of no small consequence in Oleanna is the generational divide between teacher and student. An older person in a position of power referring to young women as “dear” is no longer acceptable to some, and a byproduct of “wokeness” to others.
The playwright forces you to consider, or even reconsider, where to place your empathy by setting up an avalanche of untenable situations, heading toward a collision as horrific as it may be inevitable.
Kinetic’s production of Oleanna lights the fuse, and lets the sparks fly, with Whalen and Barnum delivering the fireworks.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Oleanna is the second play in Kinetic Theatre’s A Pair of Deuces: A Celebration of the Plays of David Mamet. The first was A Life in the Theater, a poignant 1977 play about two generations of actors. Oleanna runs through July 28, 2024, at the Richard E. Rauh Studio Theatre in the Cathedral of Learning on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, 4200 Fifth Avenue, Oakland. Tickets: visit https://www.kinetictheatre.org/ or call Showclix at 1-888-718-4253.
“Oleanna runs through June 30, 2024 …” is incorrect. It runs through July 28.
Thanks, post updated
Double checking, the 30th date is on Kinetics web site, but 28th on the ticketing site. We are refecting the 28th as the last performance