Last modified on Sun 13 Dec 2020 09.31 EST
An anxious university student meets her professor about her grades. It takes place in his room and ends up in a college complaint for his allegedly inappropriate behaviour. He believes he has done no wrong. She feels violated and seeks redress.
David Mametâs combative two-hander might have reflected the issues and anxieties of the day at its premiere in 1992, but it is startling to see this revival following Harvey Weinsteinâs watershed rape conviction. Could Mamet have written a #MeToo play long before #MeToo became a movement?
Not quite, though this brutal and brilliant production, directed by Lucy Bailey, gains new resonance in the light of all that has come to pass and perhaps says things now that Mamet did not mean it to say. There have been many recent powerful stories about sexual abuse and consent, from Cat Person to I May Destroy You. Maybe it is within the framework of these dramas that we hear current issues buzzing b
BWW Review: OLEANNA, Theatre Royal Bath
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© Nobby Clark
Oblique wordplay, broken sentences, meanings just out of reach. The first act of David Mamet s 1992 two-hander about education and power lulls the watcher into a false sense of security. There s something difficult to grasp about the interrupted, back-and-forth dialogue between John, a professor at a university and his student Carol, but what exactly? It seems to be a case of a benevolent teacher helping to support a struggling student; an awkward, angry and confused young woman being transformed into a budding, confident intellectual. Surprise is a form of aggression , says John at one point, and both surprise and aggression burst at the seams of this play. Each of Oleanna s three acts bring a new perspective on the previous; a new interpretation that s both entirely true and entirely false. Everything is played out in John s university office, on Alex Eale s beautifully 90s book shelf-covered set featuring classic clunky phone and computer monitor. The audience is