Shutting the Door on His Past to Settle Into His Present James Franco Directs ‘The Long Shrift’
Alexis SoloskiJuly 13, 2014: When Robert Boswell’s The Long Shrift opens, 18-year-old Richie Singer has been imprisoned for the rape of a classmate. His parents, Henry (Brian Lally) and Sarah (Ally Sheedy), have sold their home to pay his lawyer’s fees and have washed up in the sort of prefab dump that gives hovels a bad name. “The walls are made of cardboard,” Sarah complains. “The front door won’t even shut.” (Credit the designer Andromache Chalfant with the impeccably slapdash set.) At times, The Long Shrift, produced by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and directed by James Franco, suggests a similarly creaky construction. Mr. Boswell typically works as a novelist, and some of his techniques don’t lend themselves well to the stage. It’s as though he has the right materials but the wrong tools. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Symbols and metaphors — a vase, a box, a dog, the name of a motel — pile up ceiling high. A dream sequence late in the script is almost certainly a structural bungle, and passages in which characters state their claims too blatantly misshape individual scenes.
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