Oleanna: A Play Paperback - 1993

From the rear cover

In David Mamet's latest play, a male college instructor and his female student sit down to discuss her grades and in a terrifyingly short time become the participants in a modern reprise of the Inquisition. Innocuous remarks suddenly turn damning. Socratic dialogue gives way to heated assault. And the relationship between a somewhat fatuous teacher and his seemingly hapless pupil turns into a fiendishly accurate X ray of the meechanisms of power, censorship, and abuse.

Media reviews

 
"David Mamet has raised outrage to an art form. . . . Oleanna is…a scorcher. The woods are burning, and all of us are being seared in the fire.”—Boston Globe
 
“Mamet’s clenched fist to the gut—and intellect…a vicious and timely riff on sexual harassment and political correctness. Pinter, Albee, Miller. They’re all looking over Mamet’s shoulder.”—New York
 
“Wholly absorbing…a virtuoso performance…As if ripped right from the typewriter, it could not be more direct in its technique or incendiary in its ambition. . . . Oleanna is likely to provoke more arguments than any other play this year.”—The New York Times
 
“Our foremost master of the language of moral epilepsy.”—Newsweek