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<\/p>\nThe Niceties, now on stage at Theatre Three to open the company\u2019s season, has a predecessor, David Mamet\u2019s Oleanna, which is also about a confrontation between a professor and student. While Mamet took on sexual harassment in the 1990s, Eleanor Burgess\u2019 play, set during the last year of the Obama presidency, deals with the history and legacy of slavery.<\/p>\n
Sans Mamet\u2019s intentionally stammering dialogue, the two dramas have striking similarities, starting with the idea that the professor, an authority figure, has the power in the relationship \u2013 and more to lose if things go wrong. Both also raise a basic question about plays that boil down to a political argument: Which side has the writer armed with more convincing evidence?<\/p>\n
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Krista Scott and Nicole Renee Johnson star as Janine and Zoe in “The Niceties.” <\/p>\n
Theatre Three<\/p>\n
While Oleanna seems to stack the deck against the student, The Niceties does a better job of giving both Zoe (Nicole Renee Johnson) and her history teacher Janine (Krista Scott) enough ammunition to land their points. But, seen in matinee last weekend in Theatre Three\u2019s small basement space, Theater Too, the show suffered from Scott\u2019s shaky performance.<\/p>\n
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By signing up, you agree to our\u00a0Terms of Service<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n She didn\u2019t have her lines memorized well enough to sustain Janine\u2019s convictions. Frequently searching for what she was supposed to say next made the character seem less sure of herself. Zoe may have won the argument anyway, but Johnson had no such trouble, nailing her assertions that slavery marred the American Revolution, making the founders into hypocrites and leaving behind permanent racial discrimination.<\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Set in Janine\u2019s dark-wood, book-lined office at a liberal arts college, a portrait of George Washington hanging from a shelf, The Niceties opens with the professor going over Zoe\u2019s paper on the subject. The discussion remains civil for a long stretch as Janine corrects grammatical errors before turning to the paper\u2019s lack of primary sources and then what she sees as its unfounded conclusions.<\/p>\n Eventually, things get heated \u2013 and physical \u2013 threatening both the professor\u2019s career and her student\u2019s future.<\/p>\n Though pleading otherwise, neither character can really see the other\u2019s point of view because of their contrasting experiences and position in the world. Janine urges patience, citing the fact that radical revolutions have historically led to dictatorships. Zoe is sick of waiting for racial justice after all of these years.<\/p>\n Sasha Maya Ada, who directs, includes a startling reference to the current U.S. administration at the end of The Niceties. In this and other ways, the production can at times come off as polemical.<\/p>\n But it also succeeds for that very reason: Burgess\u2019 script finds the most credible arguments on both sides, a triumph of intellectual rigor that leads to a piece of riveting theater.<\/p>\n Details<\/b><\/p>\n Through Oct. 12 at 2688 Laclede St., Suite 168. $37-$40. theatre3dallas.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Jes\u00fas](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/M6PL63PUHNC4FLR6NS3YSJ6P24.jpg\")
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