Oleanna Reviews
The Chronicle, Thursday, August 9, 2001
Generation gap
The American playwright David Mamet possesses a most precious gift - a deep love of the English language, and the ability to use it. Although his plays may shock and even offend, the almost lyrical style that he adopts, even at moments of crisis lends added force to his dramas.
Oleanna is a two-hander depicting a male college professor and a young female student In America in a conflict that derives from their generation gap, but owes quite as much to their backgrounds, ages and genders. The destruction of the professor's life and livelihood by the young woman is, in her words, the result of wresting power from him, but Mamet leaves one wondering whether there is something more sinister at work.
The spell that the play cast over the audience was palpable at Hampton Hill Playhouse last week when Teddington Theatre Club and Robert Gillespie brought it to the Coward Room, with Gillespie directing with as sure a hand as one might have hoped. The interest never flagged for a moment. The secret of this was a refusal to anticipate climaxes, with the result that when they arrived, as: in the physical contact between the two actors and the dawning realisation of the man that he faces utter ruin, the effect was devastating. I was impressed, too, by the way in which the woman's notes of things said by the man were altered so very slightly as to have the ring, of authenticity when served up to authority as an indictment. We knew what he had said and how, but she added the subtlest of twists and inaccuracies to damn him.
The-two players were excellent, Denis Delahunt conveying beautifully the archetypal professor who believes he Is serving his students as much as 'education' itself, yet who crumbles as does his world so that his only response seems to lie in violence until a final acceptance of impotence and dismay. Keely Beresford displayed the two sides of the student brilliantly, emphasising ever so slightly that, perhaps all this was not spontaneous, but part of a conspiracy, yet investing the speeches with such passion as to leave one in more than two minds. This play is superb and the production of It full of truth as well as drama. The proof lay in its leaving one without a fully set idea as to the reality of what one had seen played out. Now that really is the stuff of theatre.
George Allen.
The Times, Friday, August 10,2001
The battle of the sexes
Male-female conflicts amounting to a primal struggle for power create the dynamics in David Mamet's Oleanna, presented by TTC Ltd and Robert Gillespie who directed the play, crackling with tension, at Hampton Hill Playhouse last week.
Set in an American university in a professor's office where the action takes place at meetings with his student, Carol, she seeking guidance and he, John, anxious to, but unable to, provide it. Between them lies an ever-widening chasm of incomprehension. Not only is there a generation gap, but also a cultural and social one. Keely Beresford as Carol and Denis Delahunt as John, gave electrically charged performances of the often highly distilled dialogue which illustrates Mamet's unerring knack of reproducing the language of every day.
At first Keely Beresford portrays Carol frightened as a rabbit caught in car headlights, inarticulate and intimidated by her professor's unassailable confidence. Two months later in the second half of the play the balance has shifted. Keely Beresford's Carol has somehow become empowered, developed a ruthless edge, this actress could play Lady Macbeth.
Although significantly still relying heavily on the written rather than the spoken word, we learn that with the backing of her 'group' she has submitted to the Tenure Committee, her 'report' - a damning indictment of John's teaching methods: deviations from the prescribed text, sexist, pedantic, exploitative, pornographic, elitist. Later she accuses him of attempted rape. There is some truth in her accusations but most of it is political correctness gone mad. Old testament judgements made with no quarter given. She and her 'group' have lost him his job and reputation but it's because, she says, of his own actions. He called her 'dear', he put his arm round her shoulder... Could he deny sexual exploitation? These were wrong and what she says is right. Nothing is resolved in this thought-provoking play.
Each combatant might as well be speaking a different language. Oleanna clearly demonstrates that when free exchange of thought and speech are denied, nobody wins.
Jenny Scott