Oleanna is the best of David Mamet's many excellent works for stage and screen, perhaps because he has shifted his focus from violent interactions between men (as in Glengarry Glen Ross) to male-female vituperation. Mamet started work on Oleanna before sexual harassment became a national preoccupation, before Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas and the Senate both gave and heard hard evidence of male insensitivity toward women.
John, a loquacious and stodgy professor of education, finds himself in a dangerous situation to which he is insufficiently alert. He tries to soothe Carol, a student failing his course, but his style is far from reassuring. He pompously lectures her about his educational objectives and the basis for her feelings of inadequacy. She in turn proclaims repeatedly that she understands neither his classroom lectures, his book, nor his conversation with her. Struggling to clarify matters, John reveals much about his life and attitudes. He tells Carol about his own feelings of inferiority, his ambitions, his near attainment of tenure at the university, and the financial rewards that would allow him to buy a house. He reveals his prejudices against the poor and uneducated while denying the significance of his being elitist. Failing to calm his student, John offers to help her if she will discuss her academic problems further and in secret. He puts his arm around her sympathetically but, as is clear to the audience, non-sexually. She is, after all, rather masculine in appearance.
The results are astonishing. Prim, passive, and frightened Carol becomes a spewing volcano. She accuses John not only of improper political views, but also of sexual harassment, and attempts to bring him to his knees in fear that his career and marriage will be ruined. Teacher and student go at each other tooth and nail. Their language, typical of Mamet, becomes even more clipped. Longer speeches reveal John's resort to increasing pomposity when angry and panicky. No longer tongue-tied, Carol shows herself capable of thought, action, and complicated speech.
The analyst will be disturbed and angry, along with the rest of the audience, and likely will attempt to impose intellectual order on the chaos on stage. Did Carol consciously and intentionally lure John into statements and behavior that could sink him? Is she a person who fails to understand human relations, who misperceives and misinferprets? Is she paranoid? Is she vengeful toward the teacher who will fail her and to whom she is subservient? Or is she a radical feminist who will attack and defeat the males who dominate women?
Fortunately, posing such questions and arguing about them fails to quell the emotions the play evokes. The audience identifies with both characters, as attackers, in their rage and suffering. The two actors are magnificent. Rebecca Pidgeon, Mamet's wife, plays Carol, a very difficult role, with skill and ingenuity. She transforms herself from a quiet, restrained, even stupid girl into a ferocious, lancing woman while maintaining a constancy of personality. The role of John is demanding in a different way. William H. Macy, a college friend of the author who understands his method and mentality, plays it with command and conviction, managing to keep the audience on his side, even as he acts the superior and controlling male confused by a changing world.
Jules Glenn