Review: David Mamet's Tense and Terse THE PENITENT Debates Moral Issues

A night out at David Mamet's tense and terse new play, The Penitent, now getting a hard-edged premiere by director Neil Pepe via Atlantic Theatre Company, isn't so much an observance of human behavior as it is a debate of moral issues.

But the full story of what exactly happened to ignite the drama isn't revealed until the final scene's final moment, with audience members being teased with droplets of information along the way. In a sense, The Penitent plays out like a news story where the public is made aware of a scandal from a pieces-missing, headline-making report and then, as time goes by, more confirmed details are made available.

Chris Bauer plays Charles, a psychiatrist who is often available when attorneys require testimony as to the mental state of a defendant. But the matter at hand is that he declined to testify in a case involving a gay man arrested for a mass killing.

On the outset, we learn that the defendant's lengthy claim that Charles is homophobic, based on a comment in one of his scholarly articles, has been printed in a major newspaper. Charles blames a typographical error for all the hoopla and considers suing the publication, but his wife (Rebecca Pidgeon) wants to works things out quickly and quietly.

The play is a performed as seven two-person scenes, also involving Jordan Lage as Charles' pragmatic lawyer and Lawrence Gilliard Jr., who does a terrific job as the suspect's defense attorney, sharply digging at the psychiatrist's motivations.

Doctor-patient privilege, religion and infidelity are all worked into the mix, so much so that the story seems unbelievably loaded with twists, but that's part of the entertaining quality of it all, as are the elevated verbal rhythms that Mamet orchestrates so well into his dialogue.

But even with the unnecessary intermission, Pepe's production takes up only eighty minutes, and The Penitent might be more satisfying if paired with another short piece.