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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 812.54
EAN num: 9780802136367
ISBN number: 0802136362
Label: Grove Press
Manufacturer: Grove Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 464
Printing Date: September 13, 1999
Publishing house: Grove Press
Sale Popularity Level: 128295
Studio: Grove Press
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Richard Greenberg is the winner of the Newsday's George Oppenheimer Award for Best New American Playwright, the Molly Kazan Playwriting Award, the Pen/Laura Pels Award, and his play Three Days of Rain was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. He has been called 'a major new playwright' who has 'mastered the art of telling a simple story with such grace and skill that it becomes startlingly new' (Fintan O'Toole, New York Daily News). Greenberg's plays have developed a reputation for being 'intelligent, whimsical, always powerful pieces of theatre that are profound without being pretentious and that speak about the very basic longing of human beings' (Amy Schaumberg, Drama-Logue). Collected in this volume are Greenberg's most important plays, including his latest, Hurrah at Last, which Laurie Winer in the Los Angeles Times called 'funny, acerbic and delightfully straightforward about falsehoods and bargains of intimacy.'
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Rated by buyers 
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If you are wondering what the work of Richard Greenberg is like, this volume is a very good place to start. Ranging from 1987-1998, these four plays give a reader an accurate idea of what Greenberg does. Unfortunately, it seems that what Greenberg does is write plays that leave a lot to be desired.
The volume starts with one of Greenberg's most well known plays, "Three Days of Rain". Sad to say, the piece just doesn't cut it. The characters and situations leave one aching for something worthwhile to read. There just isn't a lot at stake in the world of the play. A lot of the blame can be placed on the way the characters are written. The character whose presence looms largest over the play, Walker, is easily the biggest problem. Walker just isn't a likeable character at all. While a character certainly doesn't have to be likeable in order to be good, Walker is not unlikable in the "has no conscience/morals/feelings" sense of unlikable, but rather he's unlikable in the "annoying/selfish/always whining little brother" sense. While he creates havoc throughout the very first act of the play, he simply grates on the reader. While the characters of Nan and Pip are less irksome than Walker, they also (to a lesser degree) have the same problem; namely, they are all extraordinarily privileged and yet spend 90% of their time whining about something or other. Nothing is ever truly at stake. None of these people ever have a chance of losing anything. Why should the average reader care about the woes of rich, well-educated, upper-crust New Yorkers? Average readers will find little to empathize with in this play.
While the second act of "Three Days of Rain" thankfully changes gears and illuminates some of the very first act, it's a case of far too little, too late.
Next is what is easily the best play in the volume, "The American Plan", written in 1990. "The American Plan" is a simple, yet graceful and sad piece containing five characters who, unlike the characters of 3DOR, are interesting and conceivably realistic. The play starts off slowly and seems to be a little bit cliché, but it quickly grows on the reader as hidden complexities emerge. The play has moments of beauty and heartbreak and is also funny, well-written, and, most importantly, human.
The one-act piece "The Author's Voice" is essentially a one-joke premise that cannot be sustained in an interesting fashion for even a single act. While the core idea at the heart of the piece is sound, the initial jokey presentation sets up a tone that keeps the play from being taken seriously.
Rounding out the quartet of plays here is "Hurrah At Last", written in 1998. This play was written closely after 'Three Days of Rain' and it shows, as ideas and themes from that play reemerge in this one. Unfortunately, another thing taken from 3DOR is the presence of a totally loathsome main character. In this play, Greenberg's overly literary style totally overcomes the characters of his play and sends it collapsing like a house of cards. His characters absolutely refuse to sound like real people and their situations remain boring and unsympathetic.
It's sad that a playwright like Greenberg is constantly lauded and praised as being one of theater's top writers and yet his work is largely derivative of itself and never seems to be swinging for the fences.
Rated by buyers -
I bought Three Days of Rain after having seen a professional staging of the play in which I left unsatisfied, partly because, while it was brilliantly acted, I couldn't catch all the dialogue and blamed myself for not being impressed by the play. But after reading it, missing much of the dialogue seems like a benefit.
Joseph P. Ritz, author of "I Never Looked for My Mother and Other Regrets of a Journalist."
Rated by buyers 
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Richard Greenburg transports you in the middle of interesting and complicated adventures with his casts. I love reading his plays because his characters have fascinating relationships with each other. The author's voice is very funny!
I highly recommend reading his works.
Rated by buyers 
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A very well written play - interesting to look at the present and past and how it affects who we are. I can't wait to see how this translate to the Broadway stage. How Julia Roberts plays her part.
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Wouldn't you have liked to go to the theatre to see the crucible without knowing that it was a classic. Watching three days of rain was the very first time I went to the theatre unaware of anything about the play and then realising that I was watching one of the greatest plays ever written unfurl around me. The play is at times witty or sad or profound, but it is always real and Greenberg shows the links between the past and the future and the impossibility of knowing or understanding the forces that drove your parents. We get a picture of the parents and it is shaken apart in the second half. Three days of rain is a truely great piece of theatre.
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