BROADWAY SNAP-SHOT
by Russell Bouthiller

Dateline: APRIL 25, 2006

THREE DAYS OF RAIN

The biggest star on Broadway this year—and just about any year—is Julia Roberts. Folks have been clogging up West Forty-fifth Street outside the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre just to catch glimpse of Hollywood's $20 million woman.

Julia Roberts on Broadway is big news. Regardless of the merits of the play or the star's performance, the show is an absolute sell-out for its twelve week engagement. THREE DAYS OF RAIN is the must-have ticket of this spring, just as THE ODD COUPLE with Nathan Lane ad Matthew Broderick was the must-have ticket this passed fall

The critical reception Roberts reaped in Richard Greenberg's THREE DAYS OF RAIN, however, was anything but generous. Most of the papers panned her performance. Ben Brantley of The New York Times admitted to being a tremendous fan of Miss Roberts, then proceeded to tear her apart. So much for fan loyalty.

THREE DAYS OF RAIN is actually two sets of characters that come together in the same space to form one story. Directed by Top Gun Joe Mantello, act one opens in an unoccupied downtown loft brilliantly rendered by Santo Loquasto. The space was once owned and occupied by celebrated architect Ned Janeway, father of Walker (Paul Rudd) and Nan (Roberts).

After a self-imposed separation from the family, the disconsolate Walker has returned to New York for the reading of his father's will. Staying in the clutter space where Ned and Theo Wexler launched their successful partnership, Walker discovers a diary which contains detached and cryptic entries. One reads: "Three days of rain."

When Walker is joined by his suburbanite sister, Nan, he tries to gain insight into the stoic personality of his deceased father as well as their unstable mother, Lina, described as "Zelda Fitzgerald's less stable sister." Later, Theo's soap opera star son, Pip (Bradley Cooper), arrives and the three reflect on the conflicts that have defined their relationships as well as their parents'.

Act two takes place in the same space, some thirty-five years earlier. Now inhabited by the two young architects, Greenberg explores the triangular relationship between Theo, Ned and Lina while the performers take on the roles of their parents. Rudd is the undemonstrative Ned and Roberts the vacillating Lina who switches men in midstream of the eponymous foul weather and lays the cornerstone for the plot.

The overarching question of this production is why did a star of such magnitude choose such an ordinary play to make her Broadway debut? As Nan, Roberts is offered very little meat on her plate while Rudd and Cooper feast on the seven course meal. In the second act, Lina offers the actress greater latitude, but the story fails her by not tidily closing the circle. Greenberg's play stands out as an early endeavor by a writer who went on to do far better work, namely TAKE ME OUT. And, for the $20 million woman, it was not so much the performance, but the play itself.