May 1 - 18, 2008

INTERPLAYERS | Oleanna

On the surface, Oleanna is a play about a power play between a naive college co-ed and a university professor. The context is sexual harassment.

Premiering about a year after the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas scandal, this play brings the topic from the stratosphere into your laps and forces you to confront the issue at a very personal level.

Carol (Piper Gunnarson) comes across as one of the good high school students that was frustrated at, perhaps for the first time, finding herself at the bottom of the academic curve. On the verge of panic, exhaustion and confusion, she seeks “answers” from her professor. From dubious comments and partially overheard phone conversations, Carol pieces together a dramatic agenda of “exploitation” on the part of John.

Gunnarson is reminiscent of the Jane Fonda we all loved in Barefoot in the Park. This is her first performance at Interplayers, but hopefully, will not be her last. She is certainly a rising star worth keeping tabs on.

John (John Henry Whitaker) is exactly the type of professor who keeps so many promising students from attending college: arrogant, power wielding, overbearing, egotistical. His cold and disregarding personality at the beginning of scene one turns out to be more based on distraction by the tenure committee, his wife and buying a new home, but still it is no wonder that Carol was so intimidated. As the play resolves, John’s masculinity is cut away, almost to the point of castration, leading to the dramatic and shocking conclusion of the play. Every masculine attribute that “the group” attempted to control, if not own, comes racing back, having been penned up but never removed. It takes true skill to portray the spectrum this man experienced from sophisticate to primal in such a specific scenario.

Karen Kalensky, the director of this show, The Clean House and star of Grace and Glorie earlier this season at Interplayers, successfully added a third character to the script. “You wouldn’t believe how little instruction he (Mamet) gave,” she explained that the blocking around the desk was something she used to define the power position and the constant rock back and forth between the two characters who had all but changed character names by the end of the play.

The desk was the ballast that stabilized the play in my mind, and allowed the actors to throw any reserve out the window and express the true, raw emotion required to convey the passion involved in the scandalous firestorm, which occurred following the Hill/Thomas hearings.

If there was a fourth character, it would be the “Group.” We all have these “Groups” in our lives. These are the people who try and tell us who we should be, how we should take things, what it means to be a man, a woman, a Christian, queer, etc.

In this case, and in many cases, these groups are cults, which through a process of “group think” get their members to do things beyond their normal response, such as taking advantage of a possibly innocent situation and pursuing it to “make a point.”

The great thing about this play is you don’t really know how real any of it is—who is the victim and who is the villain. I have my guess, but these two actors kept me guessing until the very end… although I did have some extra sympathy for Carol at the conclusion of the third act, by which point John had been reduced to an emotion driven troglodyte compared to his act one persona.

Chris Engeldinger (stage manager) and Maynard Villers (scene and lighting design) provided a great setting for the play, which allowed the imagination to leave the confines of the theater and actually enter the small office of a college professor, but especially noteworthy on the production side is Janna Cresswell as the costume designer. Along with the transference of power as the play, well, played out, the two characters practically swapped costumes, Carol starting disheveled and unkempt, but by the end of the play was dressed in a three-piece business suit, leaving the shell-shocked John in disarray.

The play was not intended to be a “fun” night of entertainment, but rather a political commentary, it is worth seeing, there is some strong language and violence that is appropriate and in context, but probably not for very young children.

Oleanna runs through May 18.
On behalf of the Stonewall, I congratulate the entire team at Interplayers for capping off a fine season with another outstanding offering.

Thanks for reading!

Oleanna, one of Pulitzer prize winning playwright David Mamet's most controversial plays, is described by Director, Karen Kalensky as "a thought provoking, riveting drama with a powerful ending that will stay with you long after you leave the theatre. In the simple office setting of a university professor, his student confronts him about her grade and from there the play takes off down a road questioning boundaries, ethics and morality........"

The role of Oleanna, the student, is played by Piper Gunnarson, who played Maria in Twelfth Night, Catherine in Proof, Ophelia in Tragic Flaw, and Mama in the critically acclaimed production of American Midget, all in Los Angeles. She was also seen as Johanna's understudy, in a San Diego production of Sweeney Todd. Most recently, Gunnarson appeared in the short film Barackula: The Musical and the internet series "The Jonah Ray Show." She studied acting at the University of California, San Diego.

John Henry Whitaker plays the professor, John. Whitaker has worked on Los Angeles stages for the past 18 years and in more that 20 short films and 9 feature films including The Legend of the Phantom Rider, Macon County Jail, Phoenix, Carolina and Shallow Ground. Whitaker has worked extensively with AFI in Hollywood. In 2000, he was in the AFI movie My Mother Dreams, which won the Oscar for Best Short Film. Television guest star and co-starring credits include "The Sarah Connor Chronicles," "CSI," "Walker Texas Ranger," "Mad TV" and "General Hospital."

This is Karen Kalensky's third play at Interplayers. She played Glorie in the Interplayers production of Grace and Glorie, and directed The Clean House.

Maynard Villers is set designer, with Chris Engeldinger as stage manager. Janna Cresswell is costume designer.