SOURCE: Resnikova, Eva. “Fool's Paradox.” National Review 95, no. 1 (18 January 1993): 54-6.

In the following review, Resnikova writes that Mamet has merely presented “his theory of sexual anger” in Oleanna.

David Mamet's latest play, Oleanna (the infelicitous title refers to a fool's paradise), now at the Orpheum Theater, has been touted in several quarters as a response to the issues raised in last year's Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. But the connection turns out to be spurious: not only did the real-life hearings make for more gripping theater than Mamet's gerrymandered play, but Oleanna is not even primarily about sexual harassment.

Nor is it about the inherent ambiguity of spoken and gestural language, which balloons alarmingly when the interlocutors are of opposite sexes (witness the phenomenal success of Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand) and could very well lead a woman to believe she has been sexually harassed when the man...