Review: Richard Greenberg’s, “Three Days of Rain.” Seattle Public Theatre at the Bathhouse.

I’m not the most well-versed theatre-goer you’ve ever met. I don’t know the major playwrights or the “can’t miss” plays that come through town. What I do know, however, is that “Three Days of Rain” (playing through February 24th) is an exquisitely written piece by Richard Greenberg and that the production is ably directed and deftly acted by the small cast.

The opening act of the play occurs in an unoccupied Manhattan loft, the long-abandoned apartment of a recently deceased architect. His two children and step-child have reunited after significant time apart to hear the reading of his will, converging on the town from various points domestic and international. They bring their vastly different psychoses and desire to reconnect to a quick simmer as memories are dredged and old wounds reopened.

Evan Whitfield, playing Walker, really shines as a remorse-filled drifter, saddened by missing the end of his father’s life while in Italy. The act is a series of sharply written familial recollections by Walker; his sister, Nan; and their semi-famous half-brother, Pip. They discover elements of the gloomy apartment that contrast sharply with what they know of their deceased patriarch and speculate on earlier times when their parents used to live there. Their father’s journal, tersely written in cryptic one-liners, fuels their curiosity.

The second act occurs in the same apartment, with the same actors playing their respective parents, 35 years prior. This act is less psychological, more philosophical, as the two men, now playing “soon-to-be well-known architects” debate the merits of various architectural icons and struggle to make their mark with their initial architectural commission while sharing an attraction for the same southern belle, Lina.

“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.” - Frank Gehry

The time shift in the play serves as a really nice literary device allowing the actors to explore how the future will eventually be reconstructed out of the products of the past, with no more clarity than they enjoy in the present. These two stories, played out 35 years apart, weave a very compelling story that reverberates across a generational gap in a novel and enjoyable way.

Go see this play. It’s only here a couple more weeks and it’s well worth it, I promise.