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Dallas Morning News
Three Days of Rain Cast Compelling
By Tom Sime
8-10-02
Three Days of Rain Cast Compelling
By Tom Sime
8-10-02
FORT WORTH – During intermission at Amphibian Productions' Three Days of
Rain on Thursday, it was just possible to hear a soprano and her accompanist
practicing a lovely art song in the recital hall across the lobby from the Hays
Theatre at Texas Christian University.
That's worth noting because it might otherwise sound condescending to say
that Three Days is a lovely play. And like the song, it's a chamber piece: a trio
for three voices, whose conversation is conducted with skill by Jamie Wollrab.
With this mid-'90s drama, playwright Richard Greenberg (whose adaptation of
Strindberg's The Dance of Death will soon open in New York) vastly improved
on his earlier success, the irritating comedy of manners Eastern Standard.
Three Days is built around a similarly big stride. The play explores the gap
between parents and their children by leaping over it – backward – between
acts.
Artistic director Kathleen Anderson Milne's elegant set design, beautifully
lighted by Chad Jung, represents a dilapidated loft apartment in Manhattan in
1995 (were there any left unrenovated even then?).
In a bit of uncharacteristically pedestrian exposition, Walker (Jason Lambert)
introduces himself to us. He's the son of an architect, Ned, who with his partner
Theo ran a "spectacularly successful" firm that designed some of the world's
most famous modern buildings.
Now both men are dead, Theo at a "shockingly young" age 29 years before,
and Walker's father just a year ago. The unstable, nomadic Walker missed the
funeral and has stayed missing since. But he's come back to meet with his
sister, Nan (Kelly Mares), and Theo's son, Pip (Carman Lacivita), a soap-
opera actor, to belatedly settle the estate.
They also must reckon with their own burdens of jealousy, attraction and
resentment. Walker is an extremely difficult man, neurotic, hostile and tactless,
who uses his emotional instability to control others. Nan is cold with him, but
feels guilty because during his absence, she came to hope he was dead. And
Pip indulges him as much as his own easygoing nature will allow, but on this
particular day gives vent to his own anger after Walker subjects him to "a
Shakespearean tirade, or at least Maxwell Anderson."
In the second act, it's 1960, and Theo and Ned (played by the actors who
played their sons) have just founded their firm in this same loft. Ms. Mares is
back as Lina, Nan and Walker's mother-to-be, described in the first act as
someone akin to "Zelda Fitzgerald's less-stable sister." Here, she's a Southern
beauty on the verge of passing her prime, a creature of prodigious but too-
easily overheated intelligence that we know will drive her mad.
Theo and Ned have arrived at a division of labor: Theo will provide inspiration,
and Ned taste. But Theo has come to think of it as ideas from him, and
rejection from Ned. The love triangle of the first act is interestingly reshuffled
in the second. But there's no trace of melodrama; here, both inspiration and
taste coexist with seeming ease. Mr. Greenberg's dialogue is funny,
penetrating and smart, and the actors deliver it beautifully, with graceful
movement to boot. It's easy to be seduced by the production's pleasures, and
let the sadness of its message sneak up later. Because the kicker is that it's
not just those who forget the past who are doomed to repeat it, but all of us, no
matter what we remember. Perhaps the lyrics to the sweet-sounding song
across the way are just as sad.
Rain on Thursday, it was just possible to hear a soprano and her accompanist
practicing a lovely art song in the recital hall across the lobby from the Hays
Theatre at Texas Christian University.
That's worth noting because it might otherwise sound condescending to say
that Three Days is a lovely play. And like the song, it's a chamber piece: a trio
for three voices, whose conversation is conducted with skill by Jamie Wollrab.
With this mid-'90s drama, playwright Richard Greenberg (whose adaptation of
Strindberg's The Dance of Death will soon open in New York) vastly improved
on his earlier success, the irritating comedy of manners Eastern Standard.
Three Days is built around a similarly big stride. The play explores the gap
between parents and their children by leaping over it – backward – between
acts.
Artistic director Kathleen Anderson Milne's elegant set design, beautifully
lighted by Chad Jung, represents a dilapidated loft apartment in Manhattan in
1995 (were there any left unrenovated even then?).
In a bit of uncharacteristically pedestrian exposition, Walker (Jason Lambert)
introduces himself to us. He's the son of an architect, Ned, who with his partner
Theo ran a "spectacularly successful" firm that designed some of the world's
most famous modern buildings.
Now both men are dead, Theo at a "shockingly young" age 29 years before,
and Walker's father just a year ago. The unstable, nomadic Walker missed the
funeral and has stayed missing since. But he's come back to meet with his
sister, Nan (Kelly Mares), and Theo's son, Pip (Carman Lacivita), a soap-
opera actor, to belatedly settle the estate.
They also must reckon with their own burdens of jealousy, attraction and
resentment. Walker is an extremely difficult man, neurotic, hostile and tactless,
who uses his emotional instability to control others. Nan is cold with him, but
feels guilty because during his absence, she came to hope he was dead. And
Pip indulges him as much as his own easygoing nature will allow, but on this
particular day gives vent to his own anger after Walker subjects him to "a
Shakespearean tirade, or at least Maxwell Anderson."
In the second act, it's 1960, and Theo and Ned (played by the actors who
played their sons) have just founded their firm in this same loft. Ms. Mares is
back as Lina, Nan and Walker's mother-to-be, described in the first act as
someone akin to "Zelda Fitzgerald's less-stable sister." Here, she's a Southern
beauty on the verge of passing her prime, a creature of prodigious but too-
easily overheated intelligence that we know will drive her mad.
Theo and Ned have arrived at a division of labor: Theo will provide inspiration,
and Ned taste. But Theo has come to think of it as ideas from him, and
rejection from Ned. The love triangle of the first act is interestingly reshuffled
in the second. But there's no trace of melodrama; here, both inspiration and
taste coexist with seeming ease. Mr. Greenberg's dialogue is funny,
penetrating and smart, and the actors deliver it beautifully, with graceful
movement to boot. It's easy to be seduced by the production's pleasures, and
let the sadness of its message sneak up later. Because the kicker is that it's
not just those who forget the past who are doomed to repeat it, but all of us, no
matter what we remember. Perhaps the lyrics to the sweet-sounding song
across the way are just as sad.