BY THE entrance to the Studio is a note warning that David Mamet’s notorious play contains “very strong language”.

It does indeed, but it also contains all manner of language and indeed the battleground between tutor John (Kevin McGowan) and student Carol (Claire-Louise Cordwell) is drawn through words.

John, vain and settled far too comfortably in the ivory tower of academia, professes to love language and yet baffles first-year student Carol – and audience alike – with his airy, obfuscating way with words.

For a man who says so much, and makes his living by the intellectual application of his thoughts, it is alarming how so little of what he pronounces makes sense – and that might well be deliberate mind games by tutor and Mamet alike.

Charlotte Bullock’s set design in the suitably claustrophobic Studio favours modern, anonymous furniture and peaceful blue carpeting, but more significantly, the giant bookcase tilts towards the protagonists/antagonists, representing the stultifying crush of the professor’s academic philosophy.

He only really speaks his mind in his phone conversations over a real-estate issue that is taxing him at regular, interruptive intervals during the three encounters that make up this intense two-hander set in his office. That he now takes his calls on a mobile phone (not so in the original version) further alienates and angers his disaffected student.

Carol tries initially to hang on his every word, written or spoken, seeking clarity and struggling for confidence as she feels out of place at university and out of her depth on his course. Then, when she comes under the influence of a group and politically correct thinking starts to kick in, her unheeded warning that she has bad within her comes to fruition.

She accuses him of sexual harassment, knocking him off his smug perch, and suddenly words become her weapons. The gap between meaning and interpretation turns into a chasm as she twists his words to suit her accusatory story, while backing herself with legal jargon.

When first performed in America in 1992, the incendiary third act would culminate with audience shouts of “Kill The Bitch”. No such urgings accompany Juliet Forster’s repertory production for a number of reasons.

Firstly, she has switched the academic setting from America to Britain (while retaining real estate and realty in Mamet’s script). This brings the piece closer to home in every way and in turn makes for a more rational response, not least because Mamet lays great store in never taking sides. Who knows who is telling the truth? Neither of them, you may well conclude.

This more balanced view is aided by the directorial decision to have her actors swivel the table and move the chairs at the start of the second and third acts, so that they have a different position for each act, and the audience duly has a different viewing angle.

No one ever has the upper hand in this chess game.

The third, and maybe most important, factor is that tutor and pupil are equally unsympathetic characters, equally worthy of scorn, and for all Mamet’s avoidance of truth, McGowan and Cordwell rightly and sacrificially play their roles as truthfully as possible.

Kill the bitch? No. As you make your exit, lock the door and leave them to get on with it as you fill in the wall chart asking you who is right and who is wrong.

Oleanna, The Studio, York Theatre Royal, until November 27. Box office: 01904 623568 or yorktheatreroyal.co.uk