TCG to Publish David Mamet's The Anarchist in Late January

By Adam Hetrick
03 Jan 2013

Patti LuPone
Patti LuPone
Photo by Joan Marcus

David Mamet's recent Broadway drama The Anarchist, which centers on a female inmate serving a life sentence and a woman in power who must determine whether she is fit for parole, will be published Jan. 22 by Theatre Communications Group.

The 70-minute two-woman work played a brief Broadway run this season with Patti LuPone and Debra Winger in the cast. Critics did not take to the slow-burning play, which lasted only 23 previews and 17 performances at the John Golden Theatre. Mamet also directed the Broadway engagement.

The 96-page play will be a paperback publication. Read Playbill.com's feature about The Anarchist here.

"Nothing is quite what it seems in Mamet's latest work. With a nod to his mentor, Harold Pinter, Mamet employs his signature verbal jousting in The Anarchist, which centers on two women: a prison governor and a prisoner with a life sentence trying to make the case that she merits parole," publisher's notes read.

Here's how Broadway producers billed the play: "LuPone plays the title character and Winger plays a prison official. These actresses will make theatrical fireworks as one character, put away for life, wants out while the other wants to make sure she stays inside. This explosive new work by Mamet is about passion, redemption, deception, and revolution."

Mamet's plays include Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow, American Buffalo, A Life in the Theatre, Oleanna, November, Boston Marriage, The Cryptogram and Race.

Watch a press conference featuring LuPone and Winger: