Cast gets at heart of Mamet’s ‘Oleanna’
David Mamet’s 1994 off-Broadway drama “Oleanna” has been causing controversy since it opened. It’s often labeled a treatise about the dangers of political correctness, or, for those who prefer the opposite view, a tale about how power corrupts.
What’s important here is that RagTag Entertainment, under the quality direction of Joe Hynes, has succeeded in giving us an intelligent, often exciting rendition of this exploration of American confusion.
An innocent-sounding student begs an up-for-tenure professor to help her pass his course. At first, he’s dismissive. Then, apparently moved by her sincerity, offers to help with private tutorials. In the second section, the student winds up being not quite as helpless as she seemed. And in the third, their confrontation culminates in an act of violence. I don’t want to give away much, but the key to our enjoyment comes from debating who’s to blame.
A lot of the interpretation lies with how the director and actor choose to see the situation. Hynes makes a wise choice in allowing us to feel both characters’ point of view.
Glenn Heath as the professor gives an unusually quiet performance. He nearly whispers much of the time. Yet, you can see the conflict, the heat, going on inside his head. When he gets catastrophic news in the end, the energy draining from his head is clearly visible. But Heath doesn’t quite differentiate clearly enough between the three stages of his situation.
Breon Jenay, in the first section, locks eyes with Heath with such determination that you feel she’s inhaling every word he says. In the second interval, Jenay projects newly found half-confidence, and we believe her transformation into a force to be reckoned with. In the third section, though, Jenay doesn’t change at all. She simply continues whining, and the production grows tiresome. I think something happens to her character in the final section that Jenay and the director have yet to discover.
But this production gets at the heart of the play, and that’s no small feat. The Mamet rhythms, the high-pitched emotions, the overlapping dialogue are all here and easy to enjoy.
Anthony Del Valle can be reached at vegastheaterchat@aol.com. You can write him c/o Las Vegas Review-Journal, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125.