The play commands added attention because it is directed by the very busy James Franco. His best achievement is the sparks elicited from an excellent cast. However, there are moments that sag and need more crispness, although he works up to sharp dramatic results in the major confrontation scenes.

Boswell keeps one’s interest, mainly due to the topic, but he packs in far too much and confronts us with some situations that seem very contrived. However, his characters hold attention for the rage that inhabits them as the efforts to deal with the past and move forward in the present are explored.

Before we meet Richard, we meet his parents, Henry and Sarah, effectively played by Brian Lally and Ally Sheedy. Sarah is very bitter and refuses to see her son in prison because she assumes his guilt. But Henry has faith in him. There are other reasons for bitterness. Sarah is furious that all the money spent on litigation has compelled them to sell their house and move into a dumpy place. (We later learn something that would have added to the bitterness.) Sheedy is excellent in spewing her discontent at Henry, and the playwright is on target here. He is less successful creating an awkward sequence in which Henry has an unsettling dream.

When we do meet Richard, Scott Haze in the role is a bundle of fierce anger. Richard’s life has been ruined, he suffered in prison and has been unable to get things together since his release. Haze does the character justice in his interpretation, and I thought during the play’s unfolding that it was the kind of role Franco also might have played.

Beth is also well acted by Ahna O’Reilly. Beth’s mission is partly to show how much she suffered and partly to make Richard recognize the truth of what occurred on the fateful night and afterward. Given what happened to him, he has no patience for her suffering.

There is a very contrived scene when a friend of Beth, a rather ditsy Macy, played accordingly by Allie Gallerani, convinces both Beth and Richard, to speak at a high school reunion. Before they go, Richard comes on to Macy by playing upon her sexual vulnerability and extracts a passionate kiss, which he duly reports on the stage at the reunion to nastily embarrass her. He also uses the platform to vent his anger at everybody in a long, mean-spirited rant that in real life, if the incident would have happened at all, would have most likely resulted in a speedy ejection.

All of this leads to the inevitable private confrontation between Richard and Beth, and here the play becomes most interesting. What really happened? The line between escalating passion to the point of sex is examined. Ultimately Beth apparently said “no.” But given her actions, Richard felt she really wanted him to continue. Beth wants him to recognize that the sex was really against her will. But she claims she would never had taken him to court had it not been for the pressure of a student boyfriend and her parents that drove her into it. Class played a role here too, with Beth belonging to an upper echelon. The issue of young people flirting, coming on to one another and sex occurring under cloudy circumstances constantly crops up, with difficulty of proving guilt or innocence. Such situations are not to be confused with instances in which a student who may drink too much supposedly gets gang-banged and the alleged rape is allegedly covered up by a university. Still, no is no.