Three Days of Rain: Two Hours of Boredom

A star has landed on Broadway with a solid thud.

Well, to be fair, Julia Roberts has done all the right things to make her stage debut a proper one. She picked a play that isn't a star vehicle, but a genuine ensemble piece. She picked a brilliant playwright and an accomplished director to guide her, as though to assure Broadway that she isn't just some Hollywood star looking for street cred, but a true actress who respects her craft.

And the gestures are appreciated. It is wonderful to have a world-famous celebrity demonstrate her abundant grace and good taste by making her Broadway debut in so unspectacular a fashion. And if nothing else, Ms. Roberts certainly deserves kudos for bringing Richard Greenberg's work to audiences that might not otherwise attend a play over a spectacle musical.

So there can be no schadenfreude in watching Ms. Roberts's missteps throughout the wan and tragically dull Broadway bow of Mr. Greenberg's Three Days of Rain. While Ms. Roberts' inexperience on a stage is certainly a major weakness, it is only one factor out of several that condemn the production to mediocrity.

It's not that Three Days of Rain is bad, per se, but it is simply not up to Mr. Greenberg's usual standards. Written in 1997 and performed off-Broadway and regionally, the play clearly lays the tracks for some of the themes that would dominate later and stronger plays like The Dazzle and Take Me Out. Perceptions shift as truths are revealed, monologues expound on metaphors, families struggle with mental illness, and love may not conquer all, but it certainly overwhelms everything. As he refined his skills with his later work, these themes crystalized more clearly into more intense drama. Three Days of Rain is a solid play, and can be appreciated as an early step in the development of a master playwright, but it is not the emotional powerhouse Mr. Greenberg is capable of delivering.

So the script, in and of itself, is decent. Not great, but certainly not terrible. And if the story of three young adults learning about their families' sad and twisted histories (and those parents laying the seeds for their children's complexes) isn't very original, at least Mr. Greenberg never stoops to melodrama. The emotions he conveys are genuine and pure, as in everything he writes, and therein lies the challenge for any actor: on screen, a single twitch of an eye can convey a world of emotion, and a camera in close-up will catch it. Not so on stage. Ms. Roberts, for all her skill on film, simply fails to project any emotion past the footlights of the Jacobs stage. Her voice does not carry, her gestures do not make an impact, and her character's intense emotions fall flat. Like the script, she's neither dreadful nor wonderful. She is simply there, and remarkably unremarkable.

The men in the cast fare better, generating some powerful intensity and earning some genuine laughs as their characters gradually evolve. Paul Rudd is the more dynamic of the two by the very nature of his two roles, playing up his damaged characters to the hilt. Aptly capturing the pains of drug addiction in Act One and unbearable shyness in Act Two, Mr. Rudd makes his characters more than their weaknesses, giving them a gentle nobility that is simultaneously poignant and uplifting. Bradley Cooper is saddled with the unenviable task of playing a genuinely well-adjusted man in Act One, earning plenty of laughs (and not a few gasps) for his levity in the face of grief. By Act Two, the tables turn, and his pain is raw and palpable. It is a nicely understated performance, simple, effective, and lovely.

Santo Loquasto' s set is appropriately dark and moody for the first act, aptly reflecting the complicated and troubled lives of the three protagonists. By the second act, when the previous characters' parents set the stage for their descendants' eventual pain, the room is still ominous, but more organized, and with more plant life: order and hope before the storm scatters it all. That storm is more courtesy of Jauchem & Meeh, Inc.'s water effects than Greenberg's script, alas, and while the realistic rain looks great, soaking wet actors don't create as much intensity as powerful delivery of well-crafted dialogue. (And incidentally, does Mr. Greenberg have a special affection for water on stage? The rain in this play, the showers in Take Me Out... I sense a pattern.)

Joe Mantello's direction varies from moment to moment, either clear and intense (any scene in which the focus is on one of the two men) or overblown and ineffective (most scenes in which the focus is on Ms. Roberts). Mr. Mantello is as talented a director as Mr. Greenberg is a playwright, but just as this script is not Mr. Greenberg's greatest work, neither is this Mr. Mantello's. When directing the stronger actors with more stage experience, he's spot-on, and even heightens some of the less intense moments in the script.

The remainder of Three Days of Rain's limited run is almost entirely sold out, and every seat in the Jacobs Theatre will be filled with people eager to see either their favorite screen star on stage, or the Broadway premiere of an early work by an acclaimed playwright. Hopefully, those who attend to see Ms. Roberts or Mr. Rudd will leave with a new appreciation for Richard Greenberg's work, and will help his star continue to rise. For those eager to see an early work by the master of the craft, however, the evening will likely be a disappointment.

May his next play fare better.

Photographs by Joan Marcus