The first scene in David Mamet's short drama "Oleanna" looks promising. A college student, Carol (Rachel Fenton), inarticulate and ill at ease, goes to her professor's office to discuss her failing grades. The professor, John (John Pierson), a windbag preoccupied with his upcoming tenure appointment and the house he and his wife are trying to buy, doesn't pay attention. He indulges in flights of fancy; he shows off his vocabulary (better than hers, big surprise); he repeatedly answers the phone instead of letting it ring.

"I know that I'm stupid," Carol sniffles in a bout of self-pity. John urges her to 'speak up," then immediately interrupts her with his hands in front of him, palms out, like a human stop sign. To him, 'speak up" and 'shut up" are evidently synonymous.

If that first scene were all there were to "Oleanna," it might be another Mamet satire, a simultaneous dig at two kinds of thick-headedness. But that is not all there is to "Oleanna," which devolves into a misogynistic screed about totalitarian feminists marshaling their evil powers and dumb-bunny dupes to destroy a somewhat foolish, but by no means bad, man.

HotCity's production, crisply directed by Annamaria Pileggi, serves only to demonstrate that good acting does not help a play with a rotten core. It simply reveals it.

In the first scene, Carol barely understands what John is saying (we're not much better off) and he won't bother to listen to her. So far, so good. But as she and her unspecified "group" redefine his actions in increasingly ugly terms, we know that it's not fair to him because we saw what actually happened. Rape? Assault? Seduction? Can we settle for, he was rude?

Eventually John, angry and frustrated, gives into unquestionably inappropriate behavior. But by that point, Mamet has stacked his deck. The student and her unseen allies have made John into what they accuse him of being, and we're supposed to let him off the moral, if not the professional or legal, hook. It's not his fault, it's theirs. But 'she made me" is a defense unworthy of a second-grader, let alone a grown-up in a position of authority.

"Oleanna" is 20 years old, the product of a time when the term "PC" emerged as an invective. (Nobody ever said proudly, "We're going to be politically correct.") In that panicky spirit, it trivializes the complaints that genuine victims of sexual harassment have often struggled to assert against more powerful aggressors, and exaggerates the fear-mongering of its era. With good acting, good direction and a clever set (extending beyond the stage) by Lex van Blommestein, HotCity gives "Oleanna" every chance. That's a lot more than Mamet gives to Carol.