Prof’s stroll across MeToo minefield retains power to shock
SOME of the audience famously shouted ‘kill the bitch!’ when David Mamet’s still-shocking play about gender politics opened in 1992. Their hate was for Carol, a floundering student at a prestigious US college who seeks help from her professor John – and then ruins his life with accusations of inappropriate behaviour.
The play has been viewed as an attack on political correctness and dogmatic feminism that sees oppression in the most innocent of male gestures.
But in a post-MeToo world, is John (played here by Jonathan Slinger) as innocent as he once seemed?
In this two-hander, all the encounters take place in John’s office, where his attempts to calm Carol’s panic over her
Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath coursework are interrupted with urgent phone calls from his wife about a failing house deal.
As he attempts to put his student at ease, John becomes friendlier, regaling her with tales of his own sense of inadequacy. And when Carol (played by Rosie Sheehy) breaks down in teary self-loathing, he places consoling hands on her shoulders.
Director Lucy Bailey choreographs her actors’ body language, so that watching the professor unthinkingly trespass into the personal space of his student becomes like watching a blind man stroll through a minefield.
The excellent Slinger – who replaced John Heffernan after a lockdown delay – adopts a John Malkovich drawl as he conveys the professor’s slide from arrogance to bewilderment. And, in the year’s stand-out performance, Sheehy is superb as the vulnerable then formidable Carol.
You could argue her grievances gain more credence than Mamet intended. But his dialogue is still thrillingly fierce, and as the balance of power switches between the two, so does the weight of their arguments. So much so that, when Carol sticks the (metaphorical) knife in, you might want to shout: ‘Get the bastard!’