‘Oleanna’ Amplifies the Tension

Over the past decade or so, David Mamet’s “Oleanna” has intrigued audiences with its “Rashomon”-like perspective on a privileged, pedantic professor and the disgruntled female student who accuses him of sexual harassment. Made into a film in the mid-’90s, Mamet’s searing examination of the politics of gender toys with our notion of reality. Is the professor an abusive sexist? Or is the student a dangerous ideologue with an ax to grind?

That perceptual uncertainty was once the play’s primary thrust. But after the Sept. 11 disaster, the shifting sands of Mamet’s drama fuse into harder substance. What was essentially an exercise about the uncertainty of individual perception can now be better construed as a devastating parable about intellectual relativism and moral absolutism.

The professor, a breezy exponent of Western cynicism and privilege, clashes headlong into his arch-feminist student’s fundamentalist creed.

In the Little Victory Theatre staging, director Maria Gobetti amplifies this tension by taking things slowly and subtly. Professor and student converse amusingly at first. Then, as the twisted agenda of the play’s female protagonist becomes manifest, suspense builds to an agonizing level.

In the first act, Carol (Christine Elliott), a college student from a blue-collar background, seems more negligible than nefarious. A needy, inarticulate naif, Carol is incapable of grasping the intellectual processes of her professor John (Tom Ormeny), a brilliant but effulgent windbag who couldn’t manage a simple sentence if the building were on fire.

John is on the brink of achieving his lifelong dream--academic tenure. John, in negotiations to buy a house, constantly interrupts his first meeting with Carol to take phone calls from his wife and realtor. That rudeness proves fatally alienating.

As realized by Ormeny, John is effectively smug and blustering, oozing self-satisfaction. He is, for all his faults, well-meaning, anxious to help his stumbling student. Deceptively timorous, Carol moves John to protective paternalism.

Worse, John makes light of academia. To Carol, that’s a capital offense, worthy of vicious reprisal.

Elliott’s explosive portrayal has the effect of a sneak attack. Initially sympathetic, Carol comes across as a stuttering, bemused child searching frantically for a clue. All too soon, she is transformed into a cold and relentless revolutionary who would gladly destroy a man--or the world--out of passion for her beliefs.

“Oleanna,” Little Victory Theatre, 3326 W. Victory Blvd., Burbank. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Ends Dec. 15. $18. (818) 841-4404. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes.