Theatre in Review: The Long Shrift (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater)In The Long Shrift, playwright Robert Boswell brings together two people long after an accusation of rape altered both of their lives forever, and makes them revisit the ugly details of the event in order to render a more nuanced verdict. Richard was a high school senior when, one night a party, he was approached by Lizzie, a beautiful member of the school's social elite. Lizzie, who was drunk, came on to Richard, and he responded. Once things heated up, she protested, although without much vigor. The next day, he was arrested for sexual assault, ending up in prison. Years later, Richard is freed when Lizzie, now known as Beth, recants her story, a decision that has ended her marriage and made her a pariah in the community. (Even her parents are unforgiving; she has been relegated to the studio over their garage. She is allowed in the house only when her father isn't present.) Richard returns to live with his widowed father, Henry; his attempts at putting his life back together are hobbled by his thoroughly understandable bitterness. (He keeps saying that he was sent to "the most violent prison in Texas.") His mood doesn't improve when Lizzie/Beth shows up, demanding to be heard. Interestingly, she insists that if her accusation was a lie, her withdrawal wasn't entirely honest either. What with the national concern about campus rape, the appearance of The Long Shrift couldn't be more timely, and the confrontations between Richard and Beth at times have a palpable electric charge. Tense, wiry, barely socialized, Richard is a formidable opponent for Beth, who fiercely insists that neither of them will be free of the past until they face it together. In one especially nerve-racking encounter, he furiously demonstrates a number of violent holds on her, bringing both of them terrifyingly close to a real act of violence; the tension dissipates only when she realizes that he has probably been the victim of a prison rape. However, Boswell, who is primarily a novelist, has yet to master the dramatic format, and his play suffers from rickety construction and the presence of too many nonessential characters and situations. It begins with an unnecessary expository exchange between Henry and his wife, Sarah, who have been all but bankrupted by Richard's legal fees, as they move into their dreary, new prefab home. Henry believes in Richard's innocence and Sarah does not, but there is nothing in this scene that isn't repeated later. Sarah soon dies, but Boswell later resurrects her after a fashion, having her appear as a ghost who haunts Henry's dreams, but again, she adds little or nothing to the central drama. Furthermore, Boswell throws into the mix Macy (like the store, she keeps reminding everyone), a ferociously overreaching high school student who improbably has been made the coordinator of Richard and Beth's class reunion and who is hell-bent on getting the two to appear as part of the event's entertainment lineup. Cheery, oblivious Macy is a character out of bad sitcom who has unaccountably wandered into this fierce tale of moral accounting, and she is glaringly out of place. The scene in which Richard and Beth appear at the reunion -- allowing Richard to bare his soul in public -- is the stagiest and most unbelievable of the entire play. Not much better is the scene in which Richard makes a pass at Macy, an action designed to further muddy our already murky view of him, but which feels more like a playwright's gambit than an organic character development. When Boswell finally gets around to exposing the crossed signals, emotional baggage, and class issues that underscored the unhappy event, he makes a compelling point about how quickly the atmosphere can become poisoned in a sexual encounter between two immature, emotionally troubled would-be lovers. But it needs far more detailed examination than is offered here if he is to avoid accusations of trivializing his subject matter with a too-easy everyone-was-guilty approach. He seems to feel that it is more than enough to note that everyone in his cast of characters suffered; maybe so, but some suffered more than others, a fact that matters a great deal. Under James Franco's canny direction, however, there are many crackling scenes, such as when Scott Haze's Richard tears off his shirt to reveal a swastika tattoo that is one of the more permanent souvenirs of his time in prison, or when Ahna O'Reilly's Beth stands her ground even when it looks like Richard might assault her again. The hot-wired tension between them goes a long way toward keeping The Long Shrift watchable. Brian Lally is solid in the thankless role of Henry, and as Macy, an ill-conceived role designed mostly to provide inappropriate comic relief, Allie Gallerani does her best. If the role of Sarah, Richard's skeptical (even beyond the grave) mother could probably be cut entirely, Ally Sheedy at least invests the character with a wounded cynicism that makes us glad that she's around. Andromache Chalfant's set, with its cheap wallboard and lack of décor, is a vivid reminder of Sarah and Richard's reduced circumstances; dreary lighting is what's called for and Burke Brown provides it, although he also calls up a nice, icy-blue wash for a dream sequence featuring the dead Sarah. Jessica Pabst's costumes are spot-on, as is the incidental music and a handful of effects by the sound designer, Bart Fasbender. The Long Shrift gets points for its willingness to tackle such a hot-button topic, but it earns more than a few demerits for not going as deeply into it as it might. With some ruthless cutting and a longer, more detailed confrontation between Richard and Beth, it might be made to work. Right now, it feels like a first draft.--David Barbour 
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