"Oleanna". New College Long Room
Ok. I may take a while to recover from this one. David Mamet’s 1992 two-hander Oleanna is the latest play from Boulevard Productions, and it doesn’t just challenge preconceived notions about inappropriate behaviour: it attaches grenades to those notions, ties them to a railway track, and drives an express train over them. Harold Pinter, who directed the first UK production, said of it, ‘There can be no tougher or more unflinching play’. Harold, that’s a bit of an understatement. This production has no right to be as good as it is. It’s First Week for goodness’ sake. There are no good plays in First Week - isn’t that one of the original decrees of Lord Ouds of Gloucester Green? And it’s in the never-used theatrical space of New College’s Long Room, a venue so unpopular with thespians that the last time I saw something there was 1984. But as it turns out, the Long Room is just as intense and atmospheric as the Burton Taylor. Maybe it just fell out of favour because it’s so hard to loca...