Review: Oleanna, Ustinov Studio, Bath

Take your hats off to the team at Theatre Royal Bath and Lucy Bailey’s production of David Mamet’s Oleanna. A two-hander that can run without an interval is a great choice for the days of COVID. It is well worth seeing, and perhaps even more relevant than at its 1992 debut.

I first saw Oleanna in Pinter’s Royal Court production in 1994. The UK was considering tuition fees, and women students campaigned for “blind marking”. Harassment (and worse) was big news. In New York, audiences left the theatre fighting and “kill the bitch!” had been yelled from the audience at the play’s climax. While UK audiences were more restrained, the play caused arguments like nothing since Look Back In Anger.

How sad that, a generation later, this play still chimes – and with new notes that suggest society has still not advanced.

We’re back in the ‘90s, and in the USA. Jonathan Slinger plays John, a self-satisfied academic whose tenure is about to be confirmed and who’s buying a family home off the back of it. Rose Sheehy (last seen in Bath in The Whale) plays Carol, an angry student, failing her course, feeling excluded and left behind.

Rosie Sheehy as Carol and Jonathan Slinger as John in David Mamet’s Oleanna at the Ustinov Studio, Bath. All pics: Nobby Clark

Mamet creates a swamp of greyness between them: John is very flawed, but so is Carol. She makes many fair points; he does, too. The place of their meeting – a university – is supposed to be a site of exploration and understanding. But instead, it is a place of toxic confrontation, a tug of war for power between two cultures – that of the privileged professor and the supplicant student.

John is so desperate for a connection (no matter how imaginary) that will salve his self-contempt that he arrogantly throws away the rulebook, offering special tuition, a chance to start again and an A-grade if Carol says yes. He is deaf to her utter lack of interest in hearing him. His offer is taken later as a sexualised deal.

Backed by her un-named “group”, Carol accuses him of misdemeanour and calls for his – and other – unsuitable books to be removed from the course. His tenure, career and new home hang in the balance of her say-so see-saw. Was he offering a sexual deal, or is it more complex? Is she banning books or is it more nuanced? And when she takes power and offers her own quid pro quo, what power does John have left to use?

Mamet does little to make Carol sympathetic; she’s written – and here, played – as a largely one-note anger-machine, shouting into the void. John is by far the more rounded character on the page and off, but both actors deliver fine performances. Mamet’s weak spots are not the fault of Slinger and Sheehy. They give all they’ve got for a demanding 80 minutes.

Bailey and her team shine a bright light on our culture, and illuminate today’s world as much as that of 30 years ago. A teacher has the power of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ over a student’s future – and a student has the right to feel safe and not powerless.

Oleanna sits in the no man’s land between these places, where power is brokered in real life: where even the phrases “cancel culture” and “woke wars” are distress flares, and signs that perhaps, in the space of a generation, we have not learnt nearly as much as we’d hope.

Oleanna continues at the Ustinov Studio until December 22, and then again from January 4-16. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.theatreroyal.org.uk/event/oleanna-by-david-mamet-2

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