Oleanna Opens

David Mamet’s Oleanna, starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles, opens at Broadway’s John 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.