THREE DAYS OF RAIN. No, that's not a local weather forecast (likely as it sounds); it's the title of the next in Melbourne Civic Theatre's series of New Play readings.
With the passing of playwright Richard Green earlier this month, it seems appropriate that we honor him with a reading of another of his plays. This 3-actor, 6-character Pulitzer Prize finalist will be read on Saturday, August 16th at 2 p.m., at MCT's space in downtown Melbourne. In the cast are Sarah Lawrence and Tyler Mattingly, with a third actor yet to be cast.
THE STORY: A year after he disappeared on the day of his father’s funeral, Walker Janeway returns to New York. He takes up temporary residence in the unused space where thirty-five years earlier, his father, Ned, and Ned’s late partner, Theo, both architects, lived and designed the great house that would make them famous. Sleepless and emotionally jangled, Walker scours the old empty space for clues, evidence or keys to the tortured family history. Discovering his father’s journal hidden under the bed, he finds it as unforthcoming as his nearly silent father had been. Walker is joined by his sister, Nan, and their friend from childhood, Pip, Theo’s son, to hear the reading of Ned’s will. It is there that Walker forces the confrontation that the others need. After an evening of harrowing and sometimes comically inadvertent revelations, Walker disappears once more. This time he returns later that evening with a surprising, but to him, definitive solution to the family puzzle.
We travel back to 1960, when Ned’s journal begins. We meet the parents at the same age their children are in Act One: Ned, who seems very different from the cold monster the children conjured; the charismatic and putative genius, Theo; and Lena, Walker and Nan’s mother, the delightful, troubled “Southern woman who admits to thirty.” In the guise of a love story, we are offered all the information needed to devise an alternative reading of the sad, unexpectedly romantic family story.
THREE DAYS OF RAIN was commissioned by and premiered at the South Coast Repertory Second Stage in March of 1997. It received its Off-Broadway premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club that same year, becoming a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
It made headlines again in 2006, with a starry Broadway production featuring Paul Rudd, Bradley Cooper, and Julia Roberts making her stage debut.
Richard Greenberg is also the author of TAKE ME OUT, which won the 2003 Tony Award for Best Play. MCT has performed readings of three of his other plays: THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES in 2017; THE BABYLON LINE in 2022; and THE VIOLET HOUR in 2023. He passed away in New York City on July 4th at the age of 67.
Linda Winer, Newsday: "The play ... eloquently announced Greenberg as a major mature voice in the theater."
Howard Kissel, The New York Daily News: "Three Days, which is about how we misperceive our parents' lives, may be Greenberg's most thoughtful play ... It was quite moving."
Broadway.com: "The appropriately rainy climax of this fraught triangle comes off with unexpected force."
Tickets for the reading are $15 dollars, and will go on sale starting Tuesday, August 5th at 11 a.m. We will add a link to this event on mymct.org at that time.
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