“It’s just a course,” says Prof John. He speaks from the world of academic concept where he, on the verge of tenure, is secure, assertive, intellectually confident, professorally efficient, and a man of patronizing empathy. Yes, he is annoying. But when Carol, his student comes to discuss a paper on which she has done poorly, he seems automatically genuine, whatever his reasons, in his desire to help her.
Carol is hesitant, vulnerable, uncomprehending of his implications, ironies, and vocabulary, and seems out of her depth in academia. “I did what you told me,” she protests, desperate to pass a course on which her future depends. She concludes, “I’m stupid,” slouched. He cannot find a language that works with her and in no way do they understand each other. She takes everything literally. The tension is unsettling and we’re only a few minutes into David Mamet’s play.
Carol in her frustration –she shortly has a tantrum- is icily defiant and picks the most damning of potential meanings in what John says. Her interpretations of seemingly innocent remarks and behavior begin to sound accusational, but in his cluelessness he for some reason opens up to her candidly about himself and the “system.” He calls tests “a joke” and pontificates conceptually. But life is based on self-preservation, not concepts,
and Carol writes down everything he says.
In the end, John’s tenure and his new home and his life are all shipwrecked because a now black-suited Carol, seated with erect posture and with a supportive group behind her, has the system on her side to persecute John as pedantic, sexist, elitist, and much else. Carol has quoted his remarks verbatim, and when he calls these accusations, she is brutal is insisting they are facts. Now he is vulnerable, now she can assert, “What I say is right”. Now she can accuse, “You know what you’ve worked for? Power.” Now it is she who can inform the professor that she is going “to instruct” him.
The Soulpepper production is intense, unrelenting, and acted memorably by both Diego Matamoros and Sarah Wilson with disturbing accuracy. One will question how the inarticulate Carol of the beginning, a young woman who is pointedly conceptually-challenged (please note this politically correct description), can later orate, with remarkable fluidity and seething articulaton and viscious condescension, the position of the socially, economically and sexually oppressed. I’ve seen productions where Carol seemed to be spouting her “ism” by rote, but here she has the presence and skills of a lawyer, so one wonders at the director’s intent. Was she playing “stupid” at the outset? Does power make one articulate and able?
Of course, this modern classic takes on political correctness for all its justification and absurdity. So Carol screams, “It is not for you to say that an arm on the shoulder was not sexual” and shortly accuses John of rape because he did hold her shoulders. She demands that he remove books she finds offensive from his course and, overhearing John’s phone conversation with his wife, orders him with “Don’t call your wife baby.” The dreaded but anticipated result is that John does indeed beat up Carol and scream “You little cunt!”
It’s hard to convey the force of Mamet’s Oleanna, especially in regard to this superbly acted and directed production of Soulpepper’s, without going into all this detail. Every word is food for examination; every nuance disturbs deeply for what it implies about human nature, our system of both economy and education, the implicit sexism in our culture, the underpinning of power in every human relationship, our behavior, every word we speak and, yes, our obsession with political correctness. I did hear of one claim that this play exaggerates the truth and that such things don’t or can’t happen. Yes, they do. And if you think otherwise, you a part of the problem, or maybe all of it. Essential –don’t miss…..and take a teacher.