Three Days of Rain Reviews

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 3:49pm

A couple of out-of-town papers jumped the gun and have their reviews posted already.

The Financial Times (UK) gives it Three out of Five stars:

"Garbo laughed; Julia Roberts knits. There she is at last, sitting on a Broadway stage, the needles darting to and fro as her character, Nan, converses with Bradley Cooper, who plays Pip, her former lover. Roberts drops no stitches, but her acting is less consistent. Anyone who thought Hollywood’s reigning female star would disgrace herself live will be disappointed. At the same time, her stunning, made- for-close-up face seems unable to project the kind of external theatricality necessary to make a character come alive fully on a big stage.

It does not help that she is making her Broadway debut in an intimate story shown to much better advantage off-Broadway in 1999. Richard Greenberg’s tale of the neurotic families of two New York architects has the narration-heavy bearing of a first-person short story, as well as exquisite parallels between act one, set in the mid- 1990s, and act two, set in 1960, that sometimes elude Joe Mantello’s underpowered staging.
________________________________________________________________

In theory, one applauds Roberts’s taste in choosing a beautifully written contemporary drama for her leap into the theatrical big league. But a more standard star vehicle might have made her technical deficiencies less of an issue."

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/552a4f1a-cfc5-11da-80fb-0000779e2340.html



The Chicago Tribune is Mixed:

"Of all the movie actresses of the past two decades, none has been more associated with romantic longing and American aspiration than Julia Roberts. How curious, then, that this most elegant and poised of actresses makes her Broadway debut in Joe Mantello's uneven revival of Richard Greenberg's smart and prismatic play "Three Days of Rain" with a performance so introspective and lacking in sexual energy that it feels almost apologetic.

Perchance it's a matter of being slightly embarrassed by the veritable riot her luminous presence is causing on 45th Street. Maybe it's a well-meaning—even subconscious—desire not to overwhelm a Broadway culture in which she's a humble neophyte. More likely, though, Roberts' difficulties in "Three Days of Rain," a three-actor but six-character drama, are just another reminder that live theater requires different skills from the screen, even though it ironically needs willing movie stars to move tickets to serious works like Greenberg's torrid, triangular exploration of inter-generational angst, familial miscommunication and sexual uncertainty.

Roberts' orbit here feels so limited in range—and so lacking in oomph, projection and the necessary vocal support—that one has to repress an urge to jump up on stage, get close to that famous, wide-mouthed visage, and see precisely what she's doing. Her impulses, one suspects, are very sound. Roberts is a class act. She just has yet to figure out how to communicate that act beyond a lens.
______________________________________________________________

Cooper, extrovert but perpetually complex, finds the best balance of style in a show that celebrates a fine script but lacks a pervasive stylistic anchor. Rudd is also moving and impressive in the second act, but in the first part of the show he's a tad too far on the normative side of Walker, a man capable of greater strangeness, passion and aggression than we're seeing here.

That's the rub with Roberts and the show. Greenberg offers strangeness in all its quirky, risky, slightly incoherent glory. To embrace it is the only way to thrive. In the theater, that is."


http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/reviews/critics/mmx-gcl289f44.9apr19,1,3493033.story?coll=mmx-home_bottom_hedsh2o

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 4:45pm

I guess Julia Roberts on Broadway is such a huge event, that all bets are off. Now the AP review is up and it's Mixed for Roberts:

"The lights are dim, baby. The star power that is Julia Roberts doesn't shine as bright on Broadway as it does on the big screen.

The difference is noticeably visible on the stage of the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, where Roberts opened Wednesday in a lopsided revival of Richard Greenberg's "Three Days of Rain."

Roberts, who co-stars with Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper, gives a small, modest performance that throws off the delicate equilibrium of Greenberg's thoughtful, carefully calibrated play, a two-generational love triangle.

The personality — appealing, vulnerable and sometimes quirky — that often defines Roberts in film is missing here. In "Rain," she delivers cautious, bland portraits of two women: a reserved, emotionally controlled daughter in the first act and the woman's spirited, high-strung mother, 35 years earlier, in the second.
_______________________________________________________________

Greenberg, author of the Tony-winning "Take Me Out," has created a parade of vibrant characters, and both Rudd and Cooper make the most of them, particularly in the exposition-heavy first act. Rudd portrays Walker, a precocious, sexually ambiguous man, given to impulse and more than a little anger about his cold, distant father. He's a likable actor, even when playing cranky, talkative and sardonic, which pretty much defines his role.

Pip, the son of the second architect, is one of Greenberg's most genial creations. A soap-opera actor, he thrives on the realization that he is not special. Pip is an ordinary man and proud of it. Cooper portrays him with disarming intensity and clearly wins the sweepstakes as the audience's onstage favorite.

Which brings us to Roberts, who in Act 1 has to play reactive to the emotional declarations of her two co-stars. It's difficult to pull off, although Patricia Clarkson, who originated the role of Nan a decade ago, knew how to make the part's minimalist responses define her character. Roberts hasn't developed those nuances yet.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12391557/

[mikem]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 5:51pm

I think that Julia will get generally respectful reviews, with probably a few very positive ones. Based on what people have been posting, it sounds like she has gotten significantly better during the preview period (which after all is part of the point of having a preview period).

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 7:06pm

Broadway.com's is mixed to negative.

http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=527761

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 7:07pm

Broadway.com is Mixed:

"Star power is a fragile thing. It can be measured in box-office dollars and eight-figure salaries, it can be burnished by sympathetic lighting and framed by deft publicity spin, but ultimately it's reducible to the flesh-and-blood presence of a single human actor. Nowhere is this more true than in the real time and shared space of the theater, which can prove to be a most unforgiving microscope for an actor's instrument, particularly if that instrument is accustomed to different registers. In the case of Julia Roberts, who uneasily headlines the new Broadway production of Three Days of Rain, the stage is more like a telescope through which her star flickers, recognizably but dimly.

With her Easter Island bone structure, gulping smile and preposterously red cheeks, Roberts is the kind of sui generis star Hollywood supposedly stopped minting decades ago; a soft-focus hybrid of Joan Crawford and Audrey Hepburn, she's a gamine with backbone. But in Richard Greenberg's meditative gem of a play, which has seen better productions elsewhere (including one at L.A.'s Evidence Room five years ago), Roberts is all spine and teeth. First as Nan, a woman mourning her father and tending to her messed-up brother, Walker (Paul Rudd), then as Nan and Walker's blowzy mom, Lina, Roberts gives careful, stilted line readings and moves with a studied diffidence that doesn't seem to belong to the same lithe physical comedienne who caromed so winningly through Erin Brockovich or My Best Friend's Wedding. She's on slightly surer footing when she's still, in tete-a-tetes that play like virtual close-ups, though even from Row D these moments resonate faintly at best.


Roberts' reticence seems to have sent Rudd into hysterics. In the first act, in which Nan and Walker have a tense reunion in the abandoned former studio of their architect father and his partner, the fine-featured, shaggy-haired Rudd paddles furiously, as if he's trying to keep a sinking ship afloat, but he can't strike sparks against Roberts' flinty passivity. Sure, Walker is a raw nerve prone to dramatic disappearances and emotional blackmail, but Rudd plays his highs and lows with such strenuous exertion that Roberts' Nan seems to have little choice but to recede into pity and disapproval. There's little evidence of director Joe Mantello's work in these early scenes, except possibly as a referee.

It takes a third wheel to balance this wobbly frame. As Pip, a happily shallow TV actor whose late father was the other half of the architecture partnership, Bradley Cooper gives a preternaturally assured performance, working himself up to a first-act aria of exuberant pique that kicks the play into vibrant life. With an equal sparring partner, Rudd suddenly has a plausible target for Walker's overcooked anger, and even Roberts rises, with disarmed amusement, to the occasion presented by Cooper's undeniable presence. She may have star power, but Cooper has stage power.
_______________________________________________________________

Ultimately, though, the weather report on this uneven Three Days of Rain is lightly cloudy, zero chance of thunder."


http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=527761

[everythingtaboo]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 7:45pm

Well Access Hollywood has the most soft-focus interview I've ever seen with her right now. She does look great in the interview, and you can't help but like her in person, in spite of herself. Damn her.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 9:00pm

Lalawood Times

"Partial sunshine amid drizzle
'Three Days of Rain' isn't the best vehicle for Broadway rookie Julia Roberts."

http://www.calendarlive.com/stage/cl-wk-rain20apr20,0,3634036.story?coll=cl-stage-features

"New York — The jawline cuts with the same diamond precision. The platypus lips are as delectably thickset as ever. And the subtle wave in her reddish-brown hasn't lost its power to hypnotize. But Joe Mantello's production of "Three Days of Rain" at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre strangely muffles the nuclear star power in its midst.

Julia Roberts' Broadway debut may have engendered press hysteria not seen in the theater since Madonna's 1988 UFO-like appearance in David Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow," but onstage Pretty Woman doesn't yet warrant all the commotion."

"Roberts is going to need regular practice if she's to lose the inhibitions that, despite her unmatched radiance, cause her occasionally to get lost in the woodwork — unthinkable, if not physically impossible for her, in film. She's also going to have to choose a director next time who understands her gifts and can help her find material that will release them at full strength."

"Mantello adopts a more naturalistic approach. It's not totally wrongheaded, but it turns into something that's too often prosaic and flat. These characters, after all, are eccentrically theatrical, which is why they can flit into direct-address monologues without any awkwardness. They're accustomed to performing their identities to a public that's invariably impressed by their sophistication and sheen."



Updated On: 4/19/06 at 09:00 PM

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 9:02pm

Nothing surprising, really, in this first pack. It's nice for Cooper, who really does brighten the proceedings, and is wonderful. But my favorite in the trio is Rudd, who to me emotionally carries the play's two intertwined arcs, and as equally tortured father and son single-handledly stitches the two acts together.

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 10:28pm

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/theater/reviews/20rain.html

[Yankeefan007]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 10:35pm

"REVIEW SUMMARY
One of the three stars of the Broadway revival of "Three Days of Rain" is Julia Roberts, who is making her big-time theatrical debut. And though Ms. Roberts gives a genuinely humble performance, there is no way that this show is not going to be all about Julia. Ms. Roberts is the sole reason this limited-run revival has become the most coveted ticket in town. Mr. Greenberg's slender, elegant play from 1997 about familial disconnectedness and the loneliness of intimacy has certainly never known — and probably will never know again — such fame and fortune. On the other hand, it's almost impossible to discern its artistic virtues from this wooden and splintered interpretation, directed by Joe Mantello and also starring (poor, luckless lunkheads) Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper. The only emotion that this production generates arises not from any interaction onstage, but from the relationship between Ms. Roberts and her fans. — Ben Brantley"

"It's a shame, in a way, that this play and this theater were chosen as the vehicle for Ms. Roberts's Broadway debut. In a smaller, Off Broadway house, she wouldn't have to worry about projecting and could perhaps relax a bit. (She never seems to know what to do with her body.) And she really should be playing a romantic heroine, of the imperiled or comic variety. Her parts in "Three Days of Rain" are essentially character parts, and Ms. Roberts is not a character actress."

"Mr. Rudd, who has the most stage experience of the ensemble ("Bash," "Twelfth Night"), comes closest to making music, but in a dispassionate, generic, drama-school-trained way. Mr. Cooper (of the television series "Alias" and "Kitchen Confidential") is alternately perky and indignant in the manner of a sitcom actor doing testy and aggrieved. And Ms. Roberts often gives the impression that she is parsing her lines, leaving lots of dead air between fragments."



Updated On: 4/19/06 at 10:35 PM

[G]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 10:42pm

Brantley is spot-on.

[Lamc16]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 10:49pm

Well, I'm glad he at least didn't try to sugarcoat her performance.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 11:13pm

To me, unfair to the men. But it's doomed to be that kind of event -- if Roberts is the centerpiece, the evening's muscle as well as the cause celeb, the distortion is too overpowering, the imabalance too pervasive, and other values tend to fall by the wayside.

I still feel bad for Greenberg's genuinely luminous story being buried under a mere diva debut. (Good plays are too rare; stars can always go back to being stars.) Despite its NY particulars -- to some, its pretentious airs -- about architects and their legacy, the plight of the rich and famous, the underlying family tale is actually very universal and to my thinking accessible.

[Michael Bennett]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 11:17pm

Whether she is right for the piece or not, or whether this was the best choice for her Broadway debut - Greenberg's script is the one who is going to emerge the victor, Auggie, in that people are now going to READ the play because they've heard of it. And I bet there will be more regional productions of the THREE DAYS next year than ever before - and you can thank Julia for that.
Updated On: 4/19/06 at 11:17 PM

[Lamc16]

Posted: 4/19/06 at 11:47pm

EWW! I just read Brantly's entire review. Although he was fair in his assessment of her performance, he was so disgustingly obnoxious in his gushing over her. Not cute at all. Gross, in fact.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 12:03am

USA Today gave it Three out of Four Stars (and likes Roberts):

http://www.usatoday.com/life/theater/reviews/2006-04-19-three-days_x.htm

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter is Mixed:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/reviews/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002383157


Newsday is Postive:

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-etrain4707476apr20,0,3942555.story?coll=ny-top-headlines

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 12:03am

Kinda interesting that most people who have bought tkts for this production have never read a theatre Review in their lives.

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 12:07am

Yeah. Isn't the entire run almost sold out by now? I mean it was playing to S.R.O. in PREVIEWS.

[Banana Bear]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 7:04am

Hmmm...I can only afford two shows. I thought about TRYST and this one. So...NOT this one?

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 7:54am

I agree MBennett. This will put the play out there again.

Updated On: 4/20/06 at 07:54 AM

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 7:54am

I also just read the whole Brantley review, and think it's perhaps one of the most self-indulgent of his often self-indulgent career. His ruminations about Roberts are oddly reverential (her beauty) and borderline dishy and then brutal. But okay, that's part of his job. It's the personal investment in her stardom and value to his moviegoing, the "Julia-holics" blathering, that to my thinking is purple rhetoric beneath the critic of the TIMES. He writes as if we're deeply curious about not his critical appraisal, but his boyish movie-going star worship. Not.

That part is almost Brantley parody. We learn that Julia is often a character in his dreams -- ick, too much information, and in this context -- her b'way debut -- decidedly of the wrong type.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 7:54am

Tony nomination?

Updated On: 4/20/06 at 07:54 AM

[kas]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 8:45am

i am now officially in love with bradley cooper. just wanted to share.

:)

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 9:03am

The NYPost is NEGATIVE all around...

"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"? "
________________________________________________________________
"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."
________________________________________________________________
"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."
________________________________________________________________
"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."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

& the NY Daily News isn't that much better (although he likes the play)

"There's almost no point discussing Richard Greenberg's "Three Days of Rain" as a play. With Julia Roberts as its leading lady, it's an event! Think Puffy in "A Raisin in the Sun." Or Liz and Dick in "Private Lives."
________________________________________________________________
"When it was first performed here, in 1997, with Patricia Clarkson, John Slattery and Bradley Whitford, it was quite moving. Here it falls flat. Maybe there just wasn't enough rehearsal time for Roberts and her fellow actors, Bradley Cooper and Paul Rudd, to develop inner lives that might make their onstage actions more than cursory."
________________________________________________________________
"A major problem in this production is that there's no chemistry between Roberts and the men. At the end of the first act, for example, she kisses Cooper."
________________________________________________________________
"Part of the problem is Joe Mantello's direction. He never seems to know what to do with Roberts. For much of the first act she simply stands, arms folded, in an admittedly fetching black raincoat. Midway through the act, for no apparent reason, she starts knitting. None of this tells us anything about Nan.

Cooper and Rudd give their characters charm, but they often seem to be pushing, perhaps because Roberts projects so little. As mesmerizing as she is onscreen, she has surprisingly little stage presence.

The loft Santo Loquasto has designed conveys the two time frames beautifully, and Paul Gallo's lighting should accentuate the drama. Unfortunately, there isn't much."

[bschneid76]

Posted: 4/20/06 at 9:06am

Clive Barnes ripped it apart. Not a very nice review sadly. But for the most part there are generally favorable reviews. I liked the USA Today one.