Mamet's ground-breaking and controversial play on the male-femalepower struggle, annotated with an introduction, notes and commentary.
"An ear for reproducing everyday language has long been DavidMamet's hallmark and he has now employed it to skewer the dogmatic,puritannical streak which has become commonplace on and off the campus.With Oleanna he continues an exploration of male-female conflicts begunwith Sexual Perversity in Chicago in 1974. Oleanna cogentlydemonstrates that when free thought and dialogue are imperilled, nobodywins." (Michael Wise, Independent)
In Oleanna "John and Carol go to it with hand-to hand combatthat amounts to a primal struggle for power. As usual with Mamet, thevehicle for that combat is crackling, highly distilled dialogueunencumbered by literary frills or phony theatrical ones." (Frank Rich,International Herald Tribune)