When It Rains, It Doesn’t Always Pour…

Three Days of Rain, By Richard GreenbergLast Friday, I brought a visiting friend of mine to the Apollo Theatre to see the show Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg. It tells the story of a brother and sister who reunite in New York City to claim their fortune after their father’s death. Set in an abandoned loft in downtown Manhattan in 1995, the first act begins to reveal the history and strains of the family unit as told by the brother and sister, and their best friend. The three young adults recount stories about their childhood and the life of their parents, two famous architects and one’s the wife, as they can recall through memories and entries written in a mysterious journal. The second act goes back to the 1960s, a time in which the partners actually lived in the loft, and a time in which they came to meet a rowdy Southern belle, the mother of the brother and sister. This rewind aims to demonstrate how the children have inherited more than simply a financial fortune from their parents, and to uncover the tension between the architects over the struggles of their partnership and foreseeable love triangle.

The potential for this play to deliver exists, but the actors’ New York and Southern accents, paired with the tendency to over dramatize the roles keeps the true promise on the script pages. Walker, the slightly mental son, and Ned, the recently deceased architect are played by the always-adorable James McAvoy. No stranger to Hollywood blockbusters, he effortlessly demonstrates the American accent of his character, and does a wonderful job of achieving a stutter in the second act. However, his inclination to “over express” the characters keep them from feeling natural, as evidenced by the concluding moment of the show in which he screams out, “THE BEGINNING OF ERROR!” I felt like the play had suddenly transformed to Braveheart, and instead of holding a pencil out at an easel, he should have been holding a sword leading his soldiers into battle. Nigel Harman plays pip and Theo, the friend/architectural partner. He takes on the challenge of executing a thick New York accent, and it feels as if he still needs more time to let it settle in on him. Lyndsey Marshall’s execution of Nan and Lina, the sister/wife, is just plain bland and unmemorable.

At first, I wasn’t sure if my dislike of this show was due to the play itself or the stage direction and actors’ presentation. I think it could be a bit of both. The program essayist, Melisssa Rose Bernardo, claims that at the core, Three Days of Rain is a family drama, which makes it irresistible to theatregoers. She quotes Greenberg, who argues, “everything that happens in the macrocosm can be expressed in the microcosm of the family. It has that innate double power…In a way, it’s the DNA of everything.” I can’t contest this statement, for I do agree that some of the family elements of the play are handled well in the writing. Yet, just because the show highlights the already obvious fact that families and people are crazy and messed up, does not mean that the other components of the show should be neglected. For example, the whole mystery of the play, i.e. what happens during the “three days of rain” that Ned mentions in his journal, is no big mystery at all! The plot does not provoke contemplation beyond what is said on the stage; one merely must take what is presented and allows it to resolve itself. What’s more, this critic wastes more words in her essay listing other plays that successfully manifest the inherent drama of the family unit than actually dissecting the issues particular to Three Days of Rain.

By the time the curtain fell, my friend and I realized that this play would have been much more poignant had it been intended solely to be read and not acted on the stage. I must admit that well-executed moments do exist: Nigel Harman delivers a wonderfully fast-paced monologue in the first act, McAvoy strips down to get cozy with Lyndsey Marshall, and it actually does rain on stage. The cunning and subtleties are present, but, like the characters themselves, they have been mishandled and exploited so that they have become simply annoying. Ultimately, the show does contain its sunny moments, but the overall experience appropriately feels like one has been stuck in three days of rain.