HATED the play. To be sadly honest, even hated her. At least I liked the rain – even if three days of it can seem an eternity.
Why, for heaven’s sake, did Julia Roberts, film star extraordinary and box-office attraction incredible, decide to make her professional stage debut at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in last night’s half-baked, fully drenched revival of Richard Greenberg’s 1997 play, “Three Days of Rain”?
The whole magic world of the theater was wide open to the Midas touch of Roberts’ enormous fan appeal. And, I should have thought, her talent. Possibly, I was wrong on the latter count.
Certainly “Three Days of Rain” was by no means a smart choice – especially when you get upstaged in the first act by your two furiously overacting male co-stars (Bradley Cooper and Paul Rudd) and in the second by a rainstorm that’s easily the most realistic aspect of the evening.
Greenberg’s play, especially on this second visitation, seems wafer-thin. With its corny soliloquies coyly offered to the audience through the fourth wall, and its smart-aleck dialogue skidding along as pleased as punch with its own phony cleverness, it seems extraordinary that it was ever thought Broadway material.
Still, here it was. A young man named Walker (Rudd), unkempt and clearly disturbed, and his sensible, married sister, Nan (Roberts), meet up with their childhood friend Pip (Cooper), ostensibly to settle up and, even more, discuss, the legacy of their two fathers, famous architects and partners.
That’s the first act. The second is an extended flashback, with the men playing their own fathers, and Roberts playing the charming, yet potentially loco, woman in their lives.
The play’s one point of mystery, in the first act, is the questionable bequest of a house. The second act merely makes that bequest more, rather than less, inexplicable. Was the playwright asleep when he wrote it?
In any event, the badly plotted, barely plotted play – staged as tautly as a slack rope by Joe Mantello – proves a rickety vehicle for Roberts.
Her film-star brother, Eric Roberts (whatever happened to him?), chose far more wisely, years back, with Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This.”
“Three Days of Rain” was, for his sister at least, more a case of “burn that!”
In the first act, she looked long-faced, long-nosed and almost ordinary. How come? In her movies, do they use magic cameras on her or something?
She’s allowed to cheer up a bit in the second act. Her voice projection still isn’t great, but she smiles, laughs, grins and even shows glints of the Julia Roberts, that feisty movie identity we all love.
As for the men, they, perhaps urged on by some frantic act of overcompensation for their co-star, either prompted or permitted by the director, rush through the play as if they are nervous it is going to end before they do.
Really, the only nice things I can say about the evening are to praise the wonderfully atmospheric sets and costumes by the always brilliant Santo Loquasto, the lighting by Paul Gallo, and the “rain” – yes, all three days of it are actually credited as such on the playbill – by Jauchem & Meeh.
If ever I feel the need for rain, I’ll know exactly where to go.
I understand that it’s virtually impossible to buy tickets for the 12-week limited run, although it seems there may be some “premium” seats available at $251.25, which I presume includes tax.
Don’t feel bad about it if you can’t get in. Count your blessings.
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‘THREE DAYS OF RAIN’
[½ a star]
The Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, 242 W. 45th St. (212) 239-6200.