Reviewed by Jerry Kraft
Richard
Greenberg's
generational drama "Three Days of Rain" is a very well-written play with
sharp and witty dialogue, complex and believable characters and a story which
develops in a way that deepens our understanding of all these people, even when
they are no longer on stage. Noted as a star-vehicle for Julia Roberts on
Broadway, this is its first Seattle production. This time the star is superb
acting by the entire ensemble and the brilliant direction of Aimee Bruneau. I have not seen a better
performance in months, and if you love honest writing and fully crafted acting,
humane insight, gripping conflict and authentic emotion, this show is not to be
missed.
The
intimate space at Seattle Public Theatre is just right for a play that takes place in
small rooms, rooms in which people are trying to build and re-build homes. In
Act One, Walker, a man who has been missing for a year as he wandered in
Europe, returns to an unfurnished apartment on the day his famous architect
father's will is to be read. There he meets his sister, Nan, a terse and
unloving woman frustrated by her brother's history of irresponsibility, by his
self-indulgent "sadness" and by his unresolved anger with his
parents. He resents his father because he was uncommunicative and his mother
because she was mentally ill. He has inherited some of both traits. Their
father became famous at an early age, in partnership with a man named Theo, who
died very young, leaving his son, Pip (the hero, of course, in "Great
Expectations") to pursue his own ambitions. The boy becomes a television
actor, with success far exceeding his talent, something he is acutely aware of.
The three have been friends since childhood, growing up together and bound by
their personal and family history. They have also carried their interpersonal
conflicts through their lives and, we later discover, also the conflicts of
their fathers, albeit incorrectly understood.
Walker
wants to inherit his parent's home, mostly because he "doesn't live
anywhere." Nan doesn't care. Pip doesn't care. Walker finds a journal his
father kept and believes it contains the answers to his parent's lives. The
first entry, covering three days, says only "Three days of rain." A
weather report, as Walker observes of his father's selfish concision. He wants
to read everything, study everything, fully understand everything. Nan agrees
that he can have the place, but only if he agrees to leave the journal, never to
look in it again. Nothing resolves the way any of them expect. In Act Two we
will return to the same room, only inhabited by Ned, the deceased, insecure
architect, Theo, his driven partner and Theo's tumultuous wife, Lina. We learn
what the relationship of talent, desire, ambition and passion really was, and
why the journal both completely explains their lives, and, as we recognize
along with them, says nothing.
Evan
Whitfield is a
wonderful mess as Walker, a man whose disheveled life is littered with distraction,
pointlessness, self-destructive behavior and an inability to connect with
anyone important in his life. Whitfield brings enormous energy and discomfort
to the part, a man who doesn't fit in his own skin. As his sister, Nan, Sheila
Daniels is spectacular,
achieving that immensely difficult task of making a contained and
self-censoring character express infinite layers of personality, subtle nuances
of personal history and of another life led in another place, of her own
conflicted desires and disappointments. Aim_e Bruneau is simply amazing in her
ability to tighten these relationships to the tension of a piano string, and
keep every beat of their interaction in perfect focus and proportion.
When
Pip arrives, Peter Dylan O'Connor immediately convinces us of the depth and longevity of
these relationships. His easy comfort with his own limitations, his lack of
venality, his connection with these two of friends, pseudo-siblings, is all
contained in light banter, then deepened in his conflicts with Walker, not for
what he wants but for all he has not wanted. The act leaves us knowing that
these three are who they are because of who their parents were. That will be
the question act two will answer. The first act of this play was one of those
times in the theatre when I was leaning forward, deep inside the scene after
about thirty seconds, and never sat back.
In
the Second Act the same three actors go back in time to show us Ned, Theo and
his wife Lina, and their relationship as it actually existed. These are
entirely different people, entirely different characters from the children of
the first act, and from the parents those children imagined for themselves.
Ned, the famous architect, is a stuttering, insecure, novice who is being
mentored by the presumably more talented Theo. In fact, Theo is having a crisis
of confidence himself, and has no ideas of his own, no passion beyond his own
ambition. Lina is a woman who has nothing but passion, nothing but raw desire
to actually be someone, and no clear idea who she'd like that someone to be.
Their lives, during three days of rain, will explicate for us their own
futures, and the futures of their families.
Evan
Whitfield makes Ned a prototypical nerd, but not a stereotypical nerd. He is
simply in the path of the tornado that is Peter Dylan O'Connor's Theo, and as
that great, transient storm blows through, part of the abandoned detritus is
Lina. Ned and Lina will find a brief respite in each other, and Ned will find
himself. O'Connor is terrific as Theo, making his restlessness and uncertainty
a brilliance that we know, intuitively, has to burn out early. Sheila Daniels
becomes an entirely different woman as Lina, fierce and animated, seductive but
never easy, smart but lacking a center, needing some kind of confirmation that
Ned will only briefly provide.
It
seems to me that the play comes a bit unraveled at the end, not quite bringing
us to a fully satisfying resolution. One could argue that really knowing our
parent's lives is exactly like that, also, and that the lack of resolution is
in the fact that the children's lives are not yet fully lived, their pasts
never to be fully known. In any event, "Three Days of Rain" is a fine
and admirable contribution to the long corpus of domestic dramas seeking to understand
family. This production, with the accomplished and artful performances of these
three fine actors, and the top-notch sensitivity and intelligence of the
director, is a special event indeed.