Do You Know What I Mean?

I think Oleanna is one of David Mamet's weakest plays. The latest revival, starring Bill Pullman and Julia Styles, gets a rave from Variety. But I question critic Bob Verini's approach to the work.

The play is about a student bringing a professor up on sexual harrassment charges. Verini writes:

"Who's right?" audiences may ask. "Is he a predator, or she vindictive? What college is this, anyway? And how can Carol be a milquetoast in scene one and an Amazon thereafter?" But such questions are no more relevant than asking where in London one can find Pinter's "The Dumbwaiter," or why Pozzo returns blind and helpless in act two of "Waiting for Godot."

But The Dumbwaiter and (especially) Waiting For Godot are not written in a realistic manner. Oleanna, on the other hand, takes place in a realistic setting and deals with a hot-button issue of the day.

In this setting, I find the female too shrill and too stupid to buy. Perhaps extreme people like her exist, but being so one-sided they don't make for good drama in a two-person play.

Verini sees the piece as being about people interpreting things too literally--the question of what's said versus what's meant. That's not how the type of people the student represents see the issue. To them, it's not about misinterpretation, it's about two different interpretations.

Here's how Verini sees it:

This isn't a man/woman thing; it's a human thing. What do the debates over biblical inerrancy or Prophet Muhammad caricatures, George Bush's "Bring it on!" or Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony amount to but a conflict between literal and intended meaning? Given half a chance, "Oleanna" prompts excited chatter not about a fictional he-said/she-said, but about eternal miscommunication among individuals and cultures alike.

WTF? None of these examples are on point, even for what Verini claims the play is about. For example, Clinton's testimony. The point there isn't literal versus intended meaning. The question for perjury is did he intend to deceive, so both sides were arguing over intent.

The issues of sexual harrassment, speech codes and the like are specifically on point here, so you'd figure Verini might at least mention them, even if he figures the theme is bigger. Except the point about this fight is, deep down, not really about miscommunication. It's not about the literal versus the actual meaning. It's not about one person simply being mistaken, and if the other were allowed to explain, all would be forgiven. This is about different views of the world that cannot easily, if at all, be reconciled.

I think Mamet does a poor job of showing this, and in his failure makes his play less meaningful. But I think Verini doesn't even get what the play is about to begin with.

PS Meanwhile, Steven Leigh Morris at the LA Weekly seems to get the play. But I was confused by this statement:

[Something else in Oleanna] almost compensates for its grave shortcomings as a petulant if not hateful slice of rhetoric against an annoying social movement of the 1990s — “political correctness,” of which Carol becomes a shamelessly despotic representative.

Pardon me? Political correctness was a 90s thing, but we've moved on? When did that happen?