Oleanna

Walnut Street Theatre Studio Three, 9th & Walnut Sts., through April 6, 574-3550, ext. 4

David Mamet's Oleanna is a provocative, provoking play. Audiences all over the English-speaking world have been moved to outrage and indignation — sometimes yelling at the stage, sometimes just yelling at each other after the play. Mamet has pushed every button in the 1990s version of "the war between the sexes" (how quaint is the notion that that phrase used to suggest flirtation and seduction). The plot begins in a college professor's office when Carol, a troubled young woman who is failing his course, comes to ask for help, then leads them to the terrible place Mamet clearly believes is the inevitable result of feminist sexual politics on college campuses as cries of "sexual harassment" muzzle academic freedom. What Mamet thinks of the hallowed halls of academe, with their self-parodying theories of education, is yet another aspect of the play's contempt.

Mamet, who has been inspecting the ruins of American morality throughout his career, has, in Oleanna, turned his appalled attention to universities, the (one?) place where freedom of thought and tolerance for ideas is, supposedly, sacred. Now, as anybody knows who is attached to a major university, college professors no longer see students — particularly male professors and female students — in an office with the door closed. Speech in the college classroom has been censored by the thought patrols of political correctness. Reading lists for courses can be governed by pressure groups on campus.

Now, combine this with the Magician of Macho's legendary misogyny, and you have a play rigged to indict. Carol's accusations are so extreme and she is so clearly the pawn of her "group," and the consequences of her official complaint to the administration are so disastrous, that our sympathies are inevitably with the professor. Although, to be fair, Mamet has given him enough irritating, pompous and self-aggrandizing qualities to let us dislike him as well. (And isn't this typical of much contemporary drama: nobody to admire, nobody even to like, yet everybody to identify with in our era's festival of self-loathing.)

The most interesting device of this play about power is the ringing phone; we watch the professor's sentences interrupted over and over, saying, over and over "I don't understand" — the very position Carol is in in their conference. The phone brings the outside world into the play in the form of negotiations with a real estate agent; the professor's new house is a "deal" that hinges on his getting tenure.

I hated Oleanna when I saw it off-Broadway, with Mamet directing William Macy, one of the "Mamet Mafia," and Rebecca Pidgeon (now Mrs. Mamet). I couldn't tell if my irritation then was due to the extremely slow deadpan stylization that production insisted on or if it was due to the script. (I also suspected that none of those people had ever been in a faculty office on any campus in America.) I hated Oleanna when I read it for one of the university courses I was teaching, but I couldn't tell if my irritation then was due to defensiveness — after all, it's about a pompous college professor and his student.

So, what do I make of the fact that I loved this new production, with William Roudebush directing a dream cast of Greg Wood and Maggie Siff? Well, for openers, there's just nothing like good acting. Wood finds every tiny shading between exasperation and desperation, and as the trap closes on him we watch his facial muscles break down in a combination of panic and disgust. Siff's transformation goes the other way; as she becomes more and more "empowered" (let's use the right jargon here) her posture straightens, she abandons her glasses (does that make sense?) and by the end we see only the vestige of the first act's neurotic mannerisms. The blocking of the action is brilliant as the two of them play "Who Gets the Desk" as they literally maneuver for power, and the last scene is terrific, as a civilized man is reduced to awkward, unaccustomed physical violence and language like "cunt."

One word of advice: leave time for a long debate after the show, and hide all sharp objects first.

— Toby Zinman