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Past Reviews Off Broadway Reviews |
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So developed is Boswell's brew of rage, hopelessness, and redemption, in fact, that it's easy to see how it attracted its big-name director. James Franco, the film actor who's appearing on Broadway in Of Mice and Men for another two weeks, has brought the script to the stage with its potent raw edges intact. He's also injected into it a cunning undercurrent of harsh sexuality, something vital for invigorating a dual–he-said-she-said story that sometimes stumbles in keeping itself on point and on track. But overall, Franco works magic in investigating the toxicity forever swirling around Richard (Scott Haze). He was sent to prison his final year of high school, accused of raping the most popular girl in his class—a crime he has, since day one, insisted he didn't commit. His lengthy sentence, however, is cut to just five years by the efforts of a classmate who worked tirelessly to discover and promote the truth. And as soon as he's free again, Richard is naturally interested in meeting the woman, Beth (Ahna O'Reilly), who's responsible. That decision, needless to say, is hardly consequence-free itself, and discussing much more about it and the surrounding issues would risk ruining some of the more delicious discoveries on offer. But it should be said that Boswell never runs short of fuel when tracking these two. Both are haunted by the past, as much by what happened before and after as on the infamous night itself, and easy solutions cannot sate them. It's not even clear that remedies of the more lacerating variety—particularly as administered during a surprisingly tense presentation at their high school reunion—will do the trick. Some wounds run too deep to ever be healed; some betrayals cannot be forgiven (assuming, that is, the participants can even agree on what they were). Haze, who starred in Franco's film Child of God last year, brilliantly depicts Richard's broken nature, and weaves affectingly through the thickets of anger, loss, and forgiveness as Richard struggles to reclaim his identity. O'Reilly's Beth is brittle, yes, but also harsh and insistent—the actress shows how the years have taken nearly as great a toll on Beth as they have on Richard, and she matches Haze's intensity step for step. Allie Gallerani, who plays a young woman who has good reasons for siding with both at various points, shrilly oversells much of her part's dark comic overtones, but is responsible for most of the laughs that leaven the evening. The Long Shrift is not defined solely by Richard and Beth. Running more or less parallel to their tale is that of Richard's parents, Henry and Sarah (Brian Lally and Ally Sheedy), who across a broad span of time—and, for that matter, the grave—must navigate a dysfunctional partnership of their own. There's definite value in their presence, especially as it defines the extent of Richard's guilt or innocence: Dad is sure Richard didn't do it, Mom is sure he did, and even when all the facts are laid bare it's not entirely obvious which of them is correct. This effectively underscores and deepens the central mystery, and expands it beyond the participants' fairly limited reach. But Boswell has trouble integrating them into the action. The first scene, in which they bicker about moving to a smaller home as a result of crippling legal bills (the excellent, claustrophobic mobile home set is by Andromache Chalfant), contains no vital information of its own and could be heavily trimmed, if not excised altogether; a later flashback to "happier" times codifies their feelings and their marriage, but does so in too oblique a way to contribute to the drama's forward momentum at that point. And though Lally is forceful and completely convincing, Sheedy falls back on too much organic anger for Sarah to register as a different kind of victim of her son's (maybe) transgression. One suspects Boswell wanted to document the cyclical nature of discontent, revealing how the problems between Henry and Sarah brought about those between Richard and Beth as well as their (uneasy) resolution, but all the pieces don't quite come together. In the end, though, thanks to Boswell's plotting and Franco's staging, The Long Shrift does, just enough, to qualify as an unforgiving, and even strangely beautiful, meditation on how the end is seldom quite as final is it usually appears. It reminds us that salvation—of the criminal record, of the body, and of the soul—may lie just around the next corner, if only we have the gumption and the faith in others to pursue it when it's presented to us.
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater presents
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