Play: Oleanna
Playwright: David Mamet
Director: Michael Gow
Cast: Geoff Morrell and Elizabeth Maywald
Season and venue: The Fairfax, Victorian Arts Centre, to January 28
Synopsis: A female student indicts an American professor for sexual harassment
Rating: 4 stars ****
The vicious cauldron of power politics in the sexual realm is one of the chief ideological flashpoints of our time, and American playwright David Mamet's Oleanna is a stinging realisation of the theme.
An American college professor, John (Geoff Morrell), has built his academic career on theatrical classroom flourishes. Unfortunately for him, his glamorously perverse and sometimes flippant theories about education (which challenge the value of the entire process of traditional learning) percolate through sundry sexisms which make him a sitting duck for Carol (Elizabeth Maywald), one of his feminist students.
With chilling precision, Carol records and indicts John's perceived "crimes" which sharply escalate in their seriousness as the tensions between them increase. The professor's personal flaws - a volatility and self-obsessed frankness - pour copious gasoline on the emerging political firestorm.
The area of inappropriate sexual harassment has received broad treatment in film and theatre over recent years, but many women will agree that the ordinary Australian workplace still leaves much room for reform.
Oleanna (named after an attempt to set up a utopian community in Pennsylvania which failed dismally) is yet another example of how the abstract battle against sexism works itself out in real life.
While the performances in this tight two hander are potent, the pace and fury of David Mamet's script makes a series of sharp jabs at the issues which monopolise conversation after the play, rather than attempt to develop a deeper, more pensive treatment.
The play's fascination lies in the way it makes visible numerous subtle kinds of unacceptable behavior that are normally glossed over, then drives the potential forms of redress to their logical conclusion.
The vexed question is simply put: to what length should society be prepared to go to right ideological wrongs? Does the college professor deserve to lose his job tenure and house in the interests of a "political correctness" which does not necessarily have clear consensus throughout a community?
And is the student further justified in seeking redress, not merely for the wrongs committed against her personally, but also for women generally? Carol attempts to blackmail her teacher to secure the banning of certain books.
As the program notes put it: "What we are witnessing is the transformation of a clear behavioral offence into a ubiquitous thought crime and the substitution of psychological manipulation for rational discussion."
Wherever you stand on the issues, Oleanna is a thought provoking play executed with considerable flair by a strong cast.
