Bringing Closure To OleannaIf
Doug Hughes' Broadway mounting of
David Mamet’s
Oleanna succeeded in dividing audiences, it wasn't necessarily always along the gender lines the production had sought to foment. If anything, the revival seemed to split its audiences on whether the 75-minute play was good to begin with.
Perhaps stung by
mixed reviews (including
a pan from
The New York Times Ben Brantley that left me wondering if we had seen the same show) and an illusion of declining fortunes at the box office (the show took in $241,999 last week, its second week in a row with an
increase),
it was announced yesterday that
Oleanna would close January 3, immediately prior to the long cold winter months that typically take their toll on Broadway.
UPDATE (12.1.09): Today it was announced that Oleanna would accelerate its closing to Sunday, December 6.If you read Steve On Broadway regularly, you know that
I came down on the side of the production and gave both
Bill Pullman and
Julia Stiles high marks for their efforts. The play has managed to stick with me, more than one month after taking it in.
Of course, part of the appeal, but by no means my reason for providing the show with a generous 3 1/2 stars, was the talk back session employed immediately after my preview. It's often been said that audiences vote with their feet. In the case of my fellow theatregoers the day I saw
Oleanna, they were clearly engaged as virtually everyone stayed for the talk back session.
Some detractors could say that they merely stayed to get their full money's worth since the thinking is that a one hour and 15 minutes performance doesn't justify paying upwards of $100 for a ticket. But I believe this is one of those plays that leaves an audience grappling for answers, hoping to validate their opinions with others and verifying if others saw the same thing.
When given the opportunity, I stay for talk back sessions after shows offering them as personal elucidation -- my way of filling in the blanks left behind.
Oleanna was the perfect kind of play to provide these sessions to round-out the communal aspect that is the theatrical experience. I was not only pleased to participate, but I was proud that fellow blogger and friend Leonard Jacobs of
The Clyde Fitch Report was tapped as moderator for one of them.
Unfortunately for this production of
Oleanna, its playwright apparently was none too pleased with the novelty of the talk back session and they ceased immediately after the show opened.
According to one of the talk back moderators,
New York Post columnist Michael Riedel:
Alas, Mamet hated them. He never attended one, but he's against them on principle, believing that his play should stand on its own and not be picked apart by "experts" on the law, feminism and campus sexual harassment policies.
"The talk-backs added a lot to the show," an investor says, "but we were told by David's agent right after we opened that he didn't like them."
Mamet couldn't stop them. Writers control only the script, not what happens onstage after the final bow. But he had a trump card to play. When the show opened to mixed reviews, the producers had to cut expenses and asked Mamet to waive his royalties.
His price? No more talk-backs.
I don't know that I would go so far as one wag Riedel quoted who essentially said Mamet was giving his audience the finger, but I do wonder if Mamet hasn't grasped how the mindset of today's theatregoers has evolved along with their expecting more from each experience.
It's my firm belief that in order to broaden the appeal of this great experiment called live theatre, particularly during a time when its pricing seems so out of whack with reality, you need to give audiences a bone to go with their meat. Producers have to engage their audiences in new ways, incorporate talk back sessions where they make sense, use social networking to connect and yes, reach out to theatre bloggers who can help create a viral buzz that in this age of splintered media becomes ever more important.
If there is a plus, it's that the producers of Mamet's newest work
Race seem to get the importance of active outreach, including with the blogging community. Let's just hope Mamet doesn't stop them.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Bill Pullman, Closing Notices, David Mamet, Doug Hughes, Julia Stiles, Oleanna
Oleanna (The SOB Review) – John Golden Theatre, New York, New York
***1/2 (out of ****)
Temperature flares. Blood boils. High-voltage emotions not easily overcome. Whew!
And that’s just ...
me.
After taking in the outstanding current Broadway revival of
David Mamet’s
Oleanna (“revival” is a bit of a misnomer given that this is the first time the playwright’s explosively-charged drama about sexual exploitation has physically graced a Great White Way stage), I was
thankful and
relieved for the talkback session immediately following my preview performance of this impressively spent powder keg.
Thankful because after witnessing the tightly-wound precision in which
Doug Hughes exactingly directs
Bill Pullman and
Julia Stiles in this 75-minute two-hander, I couldn't help but think, “Certainly the prism through which I'm viewing this ‘he said-she said’ case in such a clear-cut manner just has to have been shared by every other audience member
regardless of gender.”
In
Oleanna, the powerful Pullman portrays John, a married college professor on the cusp of attaining tenure. He's confronted in the second act by his somewhat dim, yet prepossessing student Carol (Stiles, in an initially stilted, yet ultimately chilling Broadway debut). She's claiming sexual harassment after the first act's discussion between the two over a poor grade he gave her -- a private discussion that transpired behind closed doors.
As for being
relieved, well that's just because during my particular talkback, virtually everyone providing their opinions, female and male alike, seemed to be on exactly same page as I. There was no equivocation on anything -- except, perhaps, for the viewpoints on what is motivating
Oleanna's vividly drawn individuals to do what they do.
Far be it from me to give anything else away here. So instead, let's just say I found myself so incredibly infuriated and outraged with one of the
Oleanna’s two characters, from my front-row center seat no less, that I was finding myself suppressing something I never felt before in all my years of theatregoing: a most unusual and downright primal urge to bound the stage and take down the parasitical character directly in front of me. That in and of itself makes this
Oleanna a triumph. But it's also quite a surprise this production doesn’t employ bouncers to guard against less stable audience members!
In the days since seeing the play, I have found myself replaying all of Mamet’s words over and over again in my mind, parsing the potentially incendiary statements from both John and Carol long after I left the Golden Theatre. Can it really be that these very same lines, if delivered even the slightest bit differently in nuance or intonation, could easily be construed another way? The answer is absolutely yes.
Given opposing points of view I've heard from other performances, I have to wonder whether Hughes
et al are indeed changing it up each night so as to keep future audiences guessing or mulling over or -- much more probable -- arguing over the same questions.
What is truly remarkable about
Oleanna is that Mamet has taken a highly flammable topic such a sexual harassment and turned it on its head. Surely, most among us can agree without hesitation that such acts are vile and reprehensible.
Through
Oleanna, Mamet practically demands you to rethink what you already feel is right and just-- the question is whether you'll second guess yourself during the show or after. And that Mamet commands this kind of sway is all the more remarkable given that he originally mounted this work in the heady wake of the infamous
confirmation hearings for
Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas in which
Anita Hill’s devastating testimony nearly served as the modern-day lynchpin in defeating his appointment.
Be forewarned, while parallels can easily be drawn with that notorious episode in our history, your conclusions may be turned inside out after sitting through
Oleanna. And that's the payback you may have been waiting for. Or maybe not.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Bill Pullman, Broadway, David Mamet, Doug Hughes, Julia Stiles, Oleanna, Play, Revival, The SOB Review
Oleanna: You’ve Come A Long Way Baby
Seventeen years after first premiering at
David Mamet’s
Back Bay Theatre Company (Cambridge, MA), the playwright’s short-use drama
Oleanna is making its debut on Broadway.
Short? Its running time is among the briefest of plays, clocking in at mere 75 minutes. Fuse?
Oleanna has been described as akin to a powder keg being ignited. And that's just in the audience.
In
Oleanna, Mamet weaves a two-hander tale of a haughty college professor named John, who sexually harasses Carol, one of his female students. Or has he?
That is the long-burning argument audiences have been debating over this highly controversial work ever since
Oleanna first premiered with frequent Mamet collaborator
William H. Macy facing off with
Rebecca Pidgeon, initially in Cambridge and then Off-Broadway in 1992. It’s no accident that the play first appeared in the wake of the incendiary
confirmation hearings for
Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas in which
Anita Hill’s explosive testimony nearly ended his high court aspirations.
If you’re wondering about the unusual name of the play,
Oleanna is
the name of a Norwegian folk song about a 19th Century couple --
Ole Bull and Anna (thus,
Oleanna) -- who set out to create a utopian community, but whose dream had not counted on rocky and infertile soil.
Doug Hughes helms this first Broadway production of
Oleanna with
Bill Pullman as John and
Julia Stiles as Carol. While both are reprising their roles from Los Angeles’
Mark Taper Forum, Stiles has the longer history with the piece, having appeared in an earlier 2004 West End production in which she co-starred with
Aaron Eckhart under
Lindsay Posner’s direction.
Oleanna begins previews tonight at Broadway’s
John Golden Theatre and opens there October 11. I'll wade into the fray with my own SOB Review shortly thereafter.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Bill Pullman, Broadway, David Mamet, Doug Hughes, Julia Stiles, Oleanna, Play, Revival
