Hero is the surprising word that men employ when they speak of Jack the Ripper.

Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will

Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.

Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch

Decently married bedrooms across America are the settings for nightly rape.

Robin Morgan, Editor of Ms.

I present the exhibits above in defense of David Mamet. In the public print and on numerous radio call-in shows, hard-line feminists have been attacking his new play, Oleanna. They claim that it distorts their aims and rhetoric. But how could anyone—even a lowly male—draw caricatures more ludicrous than the ones provided by the ideologues themselves? Had they attacked the dramaturgy or the direction they might have scored some telling points. But then, sense and sexual politics are strangers in America.

Oleanna unfurls at the office of a sociology professor. John (William H. Macy) is a bearded, bespectacled pedant peering down at his failing student, Carol (Rebecca Pidgeon). The little sophomore is baffled. Classroom discussions are meaningless; she cannot comprehend a single passage of the textbook he wrote. “What does it mean?” she wonders. “What is everybody talking about?” As Carol edges toward hysteria, John becomes a bit patronizing, putting a hand on her shoulder, inviting her to sit down, offering a few autobiographical scraps. When he was a student, the professor recalls, he too was regarded as stupid. But he was only naïve, even about sex. Why, he used to believe that the richer you were, the more clothes you took off while making love. He …

Almost every time John starts to make a point the telephone rings. Now that he is about to receive tenure, he has decided to buy a house. Calls come in from his real estate agent, his lawyer, his wife, with yet another anxious query. Alternately negotiating with them and with Carol, the professor assumes several roles: avuncular counselor, harassed consumer, browbeaten husband.

This argumentum interruptus is typical of Mamet, fragmenting the dialogue so that his characters have trouble making themselves understood. At the conclusion of Act One, Carol wanders off, as confused and unenlightened as before. Or is she? As Act Two begins, the student has abruptly emerged from her chrysalis to become a full-grown gorgon. John now stands accused of sexual harassment. According to Carol, he told lewd stories and made suggestive remarks. Furthermore, he manhandled her. The tenure committee delays John's appointment to investigate the complaint.

John attempts to reason with Carol: Surely she has misinterpreted his well-meaning anecdotes and gestures. He has only a few days to close on the house. Unless she withdraws the charges he will lose the down payment, causing his innocent wife and child to suffer. Surely she won't be vindictive. Surely this is just a misunderstanding. But John is no longer talking to the dumb undergraduate; Carol has become the highly articulate spokesperson for all the women in her unnamed “group.”

Neither logic nor anger can reach her. To Carol this is plainly and simply a struggle for power. Once upon a semester the professor had it, and now the students do. How does John like that turn of events? Before he can make a proper reply she heads for the exit, taunting all the way. Furious, John tries to restrain her, causing Carol to scream until the lights fade out. In the next scene she has taken full control. If the new charge of attempted rape is to be retracted, he must agree to the group's terms. He is not to call his wife “baby” anymore. No sexist works will be taught. She hands him a list of proscribed books. At the very top of the roster is his own work. It would be improper to reveal the conclusion; suffice to note that the program credits “fight staging” to B. H. Barry.

For addressing the subjects of multicultural despots and academic freedom, Mamet is to be applauded. His play leaps from the headlines, and the arguments it triggers have been as heated as the ones onstage at the Orpheum Theater. If theatrical works were only judged on their ability to provoke, Mamet would be en route to another Pulitzer. Alas, the best moments in Oleanna are only a small fraction of a short evening (the curtain rises at 8:06, and you are out on Second Avenue at 10:15).

The play's most obvious flaw is a lack of consistency. When the plot calls for Carol to be moronic, she claims ignorance of the word “indict.” Yet when she turns into a villainess she has no trouble using “hierarchy” and “impinge.” The only way to justify Carol I and Carol II is to assume that this is a case of entrapment: John has been set up for his crash. But there is nothing in the text to justify such an assumption. The conclusion is ours, not Mamet's. It could, of course, be argued that the playwright deliberately left out some pieces in order to have the audience fill them in. I don't think so. Oleanna has the marks of a drama written in haste, yet directed and acted with a worshipful attitude toward the author. No doubt it was: Mamet is his own director, and the mannered Pidgeon happens to be his wife. Macy, an excellent craftsman, is the only outsider, and he is practically a member of the family, having appeared in several previous Mamet productions.

Then there is the patented Mametian dialogue, all staccato exchanges and repetitious phrases. Although she is as contemporary as the 6 o'clock news, Carol is forever yammering '60s bromides: “I don't want revenge. I want understanding.” Not to be outclichéd, John either spouts his own worthless aphorisms—teaching is the process of getting students “to retain and spout back misinformation”—or he is forever stepping on his own lines like a centipede tripping over its own feet: “Did you call Jerry? Will you, will you just call Jerry?”

The most significant fault of Oleanna, though, is its confused purpose. Shaw once observed that in a good play everyone is right. In this editorial cartoon both characters are wrong. Carol is more wrong than John, that's all. Incidentally, the title has nothing to do with the text or the personae. According to a publicist, Mamet simply liked the sound of Oleanna, mentioned in a song about a 19th-century utopian community. Arch is the last word I thought I would ever use to describe this playwright. I was wrong, too.