SOURCE: "From Black and White to Red and Pink: Political Themes on the American Jewish Stage," in Studies in American Jewish Literature, Vol. 8, No. 1, Spring, 1989, pp. 66-76.

In the following excerpt, Schiff discusses Mann's indictment of the psychiatric profession and the media in Execution of Justice.

[Execution of Justice] was commissioned by San Francisco's Eureka Theatre in 1982. The play's subject is the trial of Dan White for the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first avowed homosexual to hold elective office in the United States. The particulars are familiar: in November 1978, White, a former policeman and fireman turned city supervisor, resigned his post, then asked to be reinstated. Learning that the mayor was going to turn him down, he slipped into City Hall and gunned down both Moscone and Milk. He was found guilty only of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to...