"There can be no tougher or more unflinching play than Oleanna," wrote the play’s first London director (Harold Pinter no less) to the author. David Mamet’s incisive critique of modern academia is therefore given a timely revival ten years after it’s first London production. In view of the current debate in the UK about the nature of higher education (whether it should be universally available or only to a fee-paying elite), this revival is most apposite as is the play’s central theme of accountability in education.
    Mamet’s play shows the altruistic notion of  "education for education’s sake" being eroded both by the academic ambition which pervades the teaching staff (as represented by John, the professor in the play) and by a student population in need of a degree to improve career prospects (as represented by Carol, one of John’s students).  In his two character play, Mamet presents and debates the issues raised in three tautly written scenes. The debate seamlessly arises from the intense dramatic situation: Carol, a young student, is unhappy about her examination result and in an unscheduled meeting with John, her tutor, in his office, she also indicates her misgivings about his teaching style. What begins as an innocent conversation and heated academic debate quickly dissolves into a quagmire of accusations of inappropriate teaching methodology and even sexual harassment.
    The modern, functional attitude towards Higher Education as portrayed in the play, is excellently visualized in Christopher Oram’s cold angular set for John’s office which has a huge desk on a raised oblong platform with the warmth of well filled bookcases conspicuously missing. The austerity of the room is further heightened by Howard Harrison’s stark lighting.
    It is in this cheerless, almost neo-classical atmosphere that Julia Styles (as Carol) and Aaron Eckhart (as John) confront each other. Miss Styles (herself still a student at Columbia University) passionately conveys the struggle against family and background to get to university and the desperation to achieve – above all, to understand. For her (and others like her) university is a place of work and lecturers are expected to be as single-minded as they are. Similarly Mr. Eckhart clearly conveys the academic ambition (and economic necessity) which dogs the lecturer – he must at all costs achieve his tenure at the university.
    However, in Lindsay Posner’s roller coaster production, much else is missed. The opening scene is rushed through, giving the audience little chance to keep up with, let alone appreciate, the academic argument. Indeed the potential shifts and nuances in the argument and the dialogue as a whole are glossed over. Pauses and silences and changes in dynamic are missing. Though Miss Styles has a magnetic presence on stage and an admirable stillness, at the start of the play she lacks vulnerability and therefore sympathy from the audience. Mr. Eckhart blusters through the action, clearly conveying his family and marital problems but not the smugness and patronizing attitude of an academic male in authority. Only in the final scene does the play really catch fire when academic debate finally gives way to dramatic confrontation.
    Overall, this richly literate and intensely disturbing play is given a superficial and tepid reading. The two leads are good but do not yet have the stature to carry the play off at every level, which begs the question why two Hollywood stars are appearing in this play in the West End when there are plenty of more talented actors on both sides of the Atlantic who could fill the roles far more satisfactorily.   

 London, May 16, 2004                                                             - Neil Ludwick