Shakespeare’s themes of murder and mayhem resonate with prisoners, certainly, but so do his language, his humanity and his humor. I have seen at least a dozen productions of Macbeth in my life, reviewed most of them, and directed the play at both Utah’s and Colorado’s Shakespeare festivals. But I have never seen any performance of the Scottish Play as thrilling as the one mounted and performed inside California’s San Quentin Prison in late May.

The trial of Patricia Hearst, with its kinky combination of radicalism, sex, terrorism, media hype, antiestablishmentarianism and a flamboyant cast of characters, happens additionally to raise one of the most intriguing and perplexing questions ever brought to the bar of justice: Whether a purported criminal act is essentially physical or mental.