Playwright David Mamet’s biggest gift is his ability to write unbelievable dialogue in a style that is natural, confident, and bursting with energy. Many compare his scripts to musical scores, citing the fast-paced rhythm that drives much of his work.
Oleanna, written in the early 90s, is no exception. It documents three explosive meetings between what initially appears to be a struggling student and her benevolent, and about to be tenured, professor. After the professor makes a seemingly innocent yet sexually ambiguous gesture, the student decides to dedicate herself to ensuring his downfall.
When details about past events become distorted and re-interpreted, the power dynamic between the two shifts dramatically, with Mamet supplying each character with more then enough controversial fodder to sling in the other’s direction. The play, which textually offers no clear resolution or judgment, serves as a nice example of mutually assured character assassination, or what not to do if you’re days away from winning tenure.
Graham Cozzubbo’s Hart House production of Oleanna serves up some nice moments, but ultimately fails to find the Mamet groove-that rock-solid, rapid-fire rhythm that always anchors his work.
In the role of Carol, Kearsten Lyon is a generally apt pupil whose performance gets better the angrier her character becomes. The one glaring exception to this was in her delivery of the play’s most famous (and final) line. Instead of screaming the lines as an accusation (or as proof of her previous accusations about the professor’s character) or as a perverse sexual release, the choice was made to have her deliver each part slowly and in a markedly different manner, as if she were digesting what had just happened.
The result was overwrought and detrimental to the idea that she might have planned the entire course of events right from the start as a sort of man-hating scam. Her reaction served to finally paint Carol as the victim, and prevented the play from ending at a moral impasse, as Mamet had intended.
Richard Stewart was decent enough at carrying out verbal combat while playing John, the self-hating professor, but the secret third character in Oleanna is John’s telephone-throughout the play he puts the flesh-and-blood Carol ‘on hold’ to take important calls from his wife and business associate-and whenever he broke away to take a phone call, his performance suffered.
To Stewart’s credit, faking one side of a telephone conversation isn’t an easy thing for an actor to do; there’s no voice at the other end of the line supplying the lines intended to motivate the next string of dialogue. However, it is up to the isolated actor to somehow create the semblance of a real conversation, and this is exactly where Stewart came up short. Despite his stronger moments opposite Carol, his telephone dialogue was wooden and easily broke the audience out of their suspension of disbelief.
Also under-realized were the two pivotal violent altercations between John and Carol. The first, when John forcibly prevents Carol from leaving his office, seemed unnatural in that Stewart did not go far enough with his physical actions. Lyon looked like she was in a position where she could have easily overpowered Stewart’s half-hearted restraints, but failed to do so only because of the script.
The second, occurring at the play’s violent final climax, felt unnaturally subdued as Stewart failed to fully exhaust the angry tension Carol had built up.
Performance flaws aside, the play’s set was interesting and dynamic, with the stage rigged (tilted at an angle) towards the audience. For the second of the three acts, the set was rearranged to give the audience the impression that the action was being viewed from the opposite side of the room. This effect worked well and added significantly to the themes of perspective and positioning that Mamet addresses in the script.
All of its shortcomings considered, it remains that this is still a production of an excellent play. Mamet’s script delivers a heavy punch, even with performances that are less then perfect. That being said, Stewart and Lyon are nowhere near incompetent and were both able to make most of Mamet’s jokes work, and one crucial plot moment garnered a considerable amount of audience reaction.
Ultimately, the most disappointing aspect of this production is that it had the potential to be truly great, but was merely good.
