Three Days of Rain

Three Days of Rain is a drama by the American playwright Richard Greenberg, first performed in 1997. It is an original story, not an adaptation of a book or a film, and although it deals with a death in the family and a disputed will, it has a strong comic streak. The premise fits in a sentence: an architect has died, and his grown children try to make sense of the will he left and of a private journal that explains almost nothing.

What sets the play apart is its shape. Three actors play six roles across two acts. In the first act, set in 1995, they are a brother, a sister and the friend they grew up with. In the second, set in April 1960, the same three performers play the older generation as young people: the siblings' father and mother and the friend's father, in the very same room.

In 1998 the play was among the finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This Broadway revival is its second production on Broadway, after a 2006 staging, and it is directed by Tony Award winner Anna D. Shapiro.

The first act takes place in 1995 in an empty loft studio in lower Manhattan, where the architect Ned Janeway and his partner, Theo Wexler, once worked together. Their best-known building, Janeway House, is what made the family name. Ned has died. His son, Walker, dropped out of sight after the funeral and has turned up living in the studio. Ned's daughter, Nan, the steadier of the two siblings, meets him there.

Walker has found his father's journal and hopes it will finally tell him who Ned was. The trouble is that Ned wrote almost nothing. The first entry, from April 1960, records little more than three days of rain, and the rest is just as spare, which leaves Walker free to read whatever he wants into it.

Then Pip arrives. He is Theo's son, a television actor, and a friend of Walker and Nan since childhood. Ned's will has just been read, and it holds a shock: Janeway House goes to Pip, not to Ned's own children. The bequest drags up resentments and secrets the friends have carried for years, and the three end up arguing over what Ned meant and over who their parents were before they had children.

The second act turns the clock back to April 1960. The room is the same, but the actors now play the parents as young people. Ned is shy and has a stammer. Theo, his partner, is magnetic and ambitious. Lina, a changeable Southern woman who will become Walker and Nan's mother, is at this point involved with Theo. A good deal of what the children took for granted in the first act turns out to be wrong. How, and why, is best discovered in the theater.

Greenberg wrote the play on commission from South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, California, which gave it its first production. The company was a regular home for his work: over his career, eight of his plays had their premieres there.

The script is about inheritance in the widest sense. The property matters, but the bigger question is what a family hands down besides property, and how easily children misjudge the people who raised them. The first act runs on guesswork, as three adults try to rebuild a story from a will and a notebook with almost nothing in it. The second act lets the audience see for itself what the first act could only argue about.

The doubling is part of the design. The actor who plays Walker also plays his father, Ned; the actor who plays Pip also plays Pip's father, Theo; and the actress who plays Nan also plays Lina, her own mother. Each performer creates two people, a generation apart, in a single evening.

Greenberg took the title from a line in W. S. Merwin's 1967 poem "For the Anniversary of My Death," and in the play the same phrase sums up the opening entry of Ned's journal. The play is often likened to the work of Tom Stoppard, but Greenberg reportedly said he had not known Stoppard's plays when he wrote it and named the 1967 BBC television series The Forsyte Saga as a far bigger influence.

As of October 2026, the announced cast is David Corenswet as Walker and Ned, François Arnaud as Pip and Theo, and Yvonne Strahovski as Nan and Lina. Corenswet played the title role in the film Superman, Arnaud is known for Heated Rivalry, and Strahovski for The Handmaid's Tale. For Corenswet and Arnaud, this production is a first appearance on Broadway.

The scale is small: three actors and one room. Every scene takes place in the same downtown studio, first in 1995 and then in April 1960, so a single set has to serve both eras.

Three Days of Rain had its world premiere in March 1997 at South Coast Repertory's Second Stage in Costa Mesa, directed by Evan Yionoulis. New York saw it later that year, when Manhattan Theatre Club presented it Off-Broadway at City Center Stage II from November 12, 1997, to January 4, 1998. Yionoulis directed again, and the cast included Patricia Clarkson, John Slattery and Bradley Whitford.

Two more productions followed in 1999. In Chicago, Steppenwolf Theatre Company opened the play on February 11, 1999, with Tracy Letts, Amy Morton and Ian Barford under Shapiro's direction. In London, the Donmar Warehouse gave the play its first British staging, with Colin Firth, David Morrissey and Elizabeth McGovern.

The play reached Broadway in 2006 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, directed by Joe Mantello. Julia Roberts, making her stage debut, played Nan and Lina, with Paul Rudd as Walker and Ned and Bradley Cooper as Pip and Theo. Santo Loquasto designed the sets and costumes, Paul Gallo the lighting, and David Van Tieghem the sound and original music. Previews began on March 28, 2006, the production opened on April 19, and it closed on June 18, 2006, after 26 previews and 70 regular performances.

In 2009 the play returned to London. From February to May, Jamie Lloyd directed it at the Apollo Theatre in the West End, with James McAvoy as Walker and Ned, Nigel Harman as Pip and Theo, and Lyndsey Marshal as Nan and Lina. Beyond these major stagings, regional companies in the United States and other countries have produced it many times; in 2011 it went back to South Coast Repertory for the first time since the 1997 premiere, with David Emmes directing.

The new revival was announced on June 25, 2026, together with its director and its three leads, while the theater was still to be confirmed. On October 13, 2026, the producers named the Longacre Theatre, set the dates and introduced the design team. The schedule announced then has previews from January 30, 2027, and an official opening on March 1, 2027.