Oleanna Exits

David Mamet's Oleanna, starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles plays its final performance at Broadway's Golden Theatre.

Directed by Doug Hughes, Oleanna is the story of an explosive emotional power struggle between a female college student and her fortysomething professor. The play premiered in 1992 at the Back Bay Theater Company in Cambridge, MA, directed by Mamet and starring Rebecca Pidgeon (the playwright’s wife) and quintessential Mamet man William H. Macy (who stepped in for Jeremy Piven last season in Broadway’s Speed-the-Plow). A few months later Oleanna moved to off-Broadway’s Orpheum Theatre, where it ran for more than 15 months. A Mamet-helmed 1994 film, with Macy and Debra Eisenstadt, was less successful.

This production of Oleanna , which centers on a power struggle between a self-absorbed college professor and his troubled student, opened to at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in June before landing on Broadway on September 29.