Entertainment

‘Anarchist’ simply isn’t that radical

Broadway prefers comfort food: a familiar classic here, a new comedy there, maybe a hot-button-issue drama to look relevant. So David Mamet’s “The Anarchist” stands out as a new play of ideas, and a fairly abstract one at that.

Of course, the prospective pill is made more alluring by its headliners. On the one hand we have show-tune queen Patti LuPone; on the other there’s the Broadway debut of Hollywood rebel Debra Winger, whose sudden retirement from movies once prompted a documentary titled “Searching for Debra Winger.”

LuPone plays Cathy, who’s spent the past 35 years behind bars for participating in a robbery in which two officers were shot dead. She’s now pleading for an early parole with Ann (Winger), a prison official who’s been Cathy’s interlocutor for a long time.

Cathy has behaved well and claims to have embraced Christ, making her look like a textbook example of successful rehabilitation. She also wants to see her dying father. When Ann asks what the grounds for release should be, Cathy answers, “Would you mock me for suggesting ‘kindness’?”

But this model prisoner is no “mere criminal” — she had political motives. Modeled on former Weather Underground members Kathy Boudin and Judith Clark, Cathy was a violent, fanatical zealot who read books by nihilists in the original French and was hellbent on destroying bourgeois society.

One of Ann’s big questions is whether the newly minted Bible reader can be trusted. Is her conversion real or a ploy to impress the authorities? Cathy points out you could ask the same thing of the saints. Does it matter what the motivation is as long as the result is positive?

The entire 70-minute show consists of Cathy’s parole-plea meeting, with the two women tossing arguments back and forth. Mamet is slow and stingy in dispensing details, maybe in an attempt to make the encounter a pure philosophical debate.

But the lack of grounding and personal insight turns the characters into mouthpieces. And the writing, repetitive and blunt, falls short of the lofty aspirations.

Real anger and passion are in short supply, and occur in the more open cat-and-mouse games: when Ann tries to get Cathy to snitch on her old lover/accomplice Althea, or when Cathy implies that Ann is a frustrated lesbian.

That last point is further made by the official’s uptight hairdo and boxy pantsuit, which scream “repressed!” as if we were in a 1970s women-behind-bars movie. At least LuPone’s Ann is equally mistreated by costume designer Patrizia von Brandenstein, who clad her in unflattering, sub-Eileen Fisher linen.

You spend a lot of time staring at those outfits because there isn’t much else to look at — Mamet isn’t the best director of his own plays — and the battle between irreconcilable viewpoints never quite takes off.

Mamet isn’t known for being shy about his opinions, so the real surprise in “The Anarchist” is what a soft punch it packs.