In 1983 in Houston, Texas, Karla Faye Tucker and her live-in boyfriend Danny Garrett bludgeoned her friend's cheating husband and the woman he was sleeping to death with a hammer and a pickaxe. In February,1998 at the State Prison in Huntsville, Texas, the government under George W. Bush put the Christian convert, who had befriended the family of her victims, to death, sparking controversy about the lack of justice in death penalty rulings.

Robert MacNeil of "MacNeil News Hour" examines the national death penalty debate through his new play, Karla, workshopping at New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre Dec. 11-14. Emmy winner Ed Sherin ("Law & Order," The Great White Hope) directs.

There will be a special reading of the play Dec. 12 with a pre-show symposium on the death penalty featuring MacNeil and Sherin. Tickets are $75 for the event, which features a cocktail party as well as the symposium and reading. Call (203) 787-4284, ext. 234.

At all other readings, tickets are $15. For those reservations, call the Long Wharf box office at (203) 787-4282.

— By Christine Ehren