Reviewers were unanimous in praise of The Exonerated when it opened at New York's 45 Bleecker Theater in 2002. Ben Brantley in the New York Times describes the play as “intense and deeply affecting.” Commenting on the fact that the purpose of the play was obviously to shake the complacency of those who believed that such things could not happen in the United States, Brantley adds that in spite of this clear mission

There is no reek of piety or creak of didacticism about The Exonerated. . . . It is, on its own terms, thoroughly involving theater, while reminding you that real life has a way of coming up with resonant metaphors, grotesque ironies and cruel coincidences that no dramatist would dare invent.

In Newsweek, Marc Peyser drew attention to the perhaps surprising success of such a no-frills, somber play at the box office. The Exonerated, he writes, “has become...