Il penitente

A psychiatrist faces a professional and moral crisis when he refuses to testify in court on behalf of a patient accused of carrying out a massacre. ‘The Penitent,’ the latest text composed in 2016 for the theater by U.S. playwright David Mamet – Pulitzer Prize winner forGlengarry Glen Ross – describes the disturbing landscape of a society so altered in its own equilibrium that the integrity of the individual,instead of guiding his shining actions by constituting a source of pride,becomes the aberration that devastates his life and the lives of those who live beside him. Involved in a suspicion of homophobia, ‘the penitent’ undergoes a veritable media and judicial pillorying and is slammed ‘on the front page’ shifting onto his person the momentary disapproval of a fickle public, constantly searching for a new culprit in whom to bring the collective’s summary justice. The influence of the press, the instrumentalization of the law, the uselessness of psychiatry-these are the themes of a play that takes place between the work environment and the protagonist’s private life. The social demolition of an individual inevitably affects his marital relationship