Oleanna

Whichever way you look at it, Mr Mamet’s knee-jerk reaction (which premiered in 1992) to a famous 1991 sexual harassment case in the USA is a peculiar choice for an airing today. It’s dated, ideologically suspect, inflammatory schtick that, infuriatingly, has a bet each way on whose side you’ll take as the events unfold.

The case in question concerned Clarence Thomas (the second African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States), and allegations of sexual exploitation/harrassment by Anita Hill, an attorney who had worked with him at the US Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Ms Hill’s claims came to light immediately prior to Mr Thomas’s confirmation as Justice of the Supreme Court – a position to which he was eventually elected by the US Senate the narrowest of margins, 52–48.

In Mr Mamet’s take, college student Carol (Melissa Karakaltsas) has paid one of her professors, John (Greg Pandelidis), a visit to discuss her grades. He’s distracted by endless phone calls about the impending sale of his new house, while Carol just sits there like an unwelcome guest who doesn’t have the common sense to know that she should really leave and come back at a somewhat more convenient time for them both.

The plot’s contrivances, like the typically Mametian ‘how on earth do the actors remember this dialogue?’, come thick and fast – and if the whole thing wasn’t so gender-politically inert, it might be even half interesting. But it’s not. John is a vainglorious fool who deserves all the misery he gets, while Carol is a manipulative viper who deserves, equally, to wonder for the rest of her life whether she did the right thing by holding this pathetic man to account for his not inconsiderable failings.

Ms Arabatzis’s choice to deliver the text to the stage unquestionably, results in a fine and faithful production that lacks contrast, and ultimately, interest. Mr Pandelidis’s ‘John’ suffers from a lack of vocal projection, rendering him occasionally almost inaudible in one of the fabulous Revolt Artspace’s more intimate theatres, while Ms Karakaltsas’s ‘Carol’, similarly, lacks confidence to own the role completely. The verbal and ideological jousting is only fleetingly believable, and Carol’s final skewering of her hapless victim is unconvincing, and certainly not the shocking moment of triumphant annihilation that it might have been in a more deeply engaged production. There is a point with the work of the treacherous Mamet, where the text has to serve the performance – not become the performance. This is especially pertinent when you find yourself in the company of two immensely unlikeable characters about whom you are supposed to care, but don’t.

But the faults in the production are largely the result of the choice of play, which renders itself completely irrelevant to the current debates around the issues of harassment – sexual or otherwise – in the workplace today. I would dearly like to see this company take on a play more suited to their obvious creativity.

I hope they do.

Geoffrey Williams