Sunday, August 02, 2009

Oleanna on Broadway

On of my favorite Mamet plays has always been Oleanna. When I heard that Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles were playing John and Carol in the LA revival at the Mark Taper Forum, I got super geeked out. While I may love Bill Pullman as Lone Starr in Spaceballs, there's a lot more to him than that.

Pullman made his Broadway debut in Edward Albee's The Goat or Who is Sylvia?

Julia Stiles, whom I love best for staying above the Hollywood nonsense and being a huge cutie in the Bourne films is going to make her Broadway debut. Good girl. Show those other starlets how you earn street cred! She also blogs. How cool is that?

Tickets are on soft sale - so if you view the opening weeks of the Broadway season to be as sacred as the beginning of Bucs Training Camp (and there are those of us who keep both sacred) - go get your flights arranged and your tickets purchased. My sources show that you can round trip from Tampa to NYC for under $200 in September.

Best of all, after you see the show, go back to Oleanna's website and vote on who you think is right.

Whatever side you take - you're wrong.

-Kari G.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I directed a production of OLEANNA several years ago (small scale, community theater). We had 3 performances and one of the interesting things about our production is how the audience changed the dynamics at each performance. It was amazing to see how the cast hit a different balance on the go. Not that they were "swayed" by the audience/atmosphere - our Carol passed closely by an audience member at one performance who called her a bitch - at another performance a member of the audience told her "way to go'. It was almost an unconscious dynamic by the cast. OLEANNA is a very stimulating play.

Kari G. said...

Great story Bob - thanks for sharing. I had the good fortune of working on the show in college and found the same climate to be true. It is a very mercurial show. I will love to watch the website and see how patrons weigh in on the conflict.