“Three Days of Rain,” the Arts Alliance’s annual Garden Party show, is a story about a typical American family — that is, completely dysfunctional.
Everybody has crazy families, don’t they?” said Speech senior Corrie Barker, who plays the two lead female characters in the play.
But this family situation might be more complex than most. The story revolves around the Janeways: father Ned, mother Lina, and children Walker and Nan. Growing up, Walker and Nan never thought their parents loved them, and more importantly, the children were sure their parents didn’t love each other. This is a reasonable conclusion, though, considering Ned, who was a famous architect, rarely spoke to his children and Lina, who was clinically crazy, spent half her life in an institution.
The play takes place in the loft where Ned and his architectural partner, Theo, lived and worked in 1960, and where they designed the Janeway House, their first and most famous building.
In the first act, as young adults Walker and Nan prepare to hear their father’s will read, they struggle with their tense family history.
“It’s about trying to figure out who you are as you become an adult and move away from your family and how your family has influenced you,” said director Joanna McFadden, a Speech senior.
Walker, played by Weinberg senior Drew Callander, is brooding and flamboyant, while Nan, played by Barker, often seems disapproving of him.
Theo’s son Pip, played by Speech sophomore Matt Carlson, joins Walker and Nan for the reading of their father’s will. When the three learn that Pip, rather than Walker and Nan, has been named heir of Ned’s will, Walker feels that his last tie to his father has been severed.
Carlson said that this play addresses, “the interactions between people, and how the past affects the present.”
Walker has been staying at the rundown loft and discovers Ned’s journal there. The play’s title is actually taken from one of Ned’s journal entries, which only reads, “April 3-5: Three days of rain.”
While Walker doesn’t seem to learn much about his parent’s past by reading his father’s journal, it serves as the link to the second act of the play, which takes place when the parents of the three, Ned, Lina and Theo, were young — the time when the journal was written. This is the period in which Ned and Theo lived in the loft, which looks much cozier in this act.
The actors also shift, now playing the parents of their original characters: Barker changes from responsible Nan to emotional Lina; Callander, from talkative Walker to reticent Ned; and Carlson, from kind Pip to ambitious Theo.
“You first hear about the parents through their children’s eyes, which is this fairly unsympathetic and kind of wrong interpretation,” said McFadden. “That’s where the message comes, like how can people completely understand who you were and what you stand for.”
Unlike Nan and Walker, the audience does have the chance to fully understand who Ned and Lina are and what they went through.
“The second act is a love story,” said McFadden. “It’s about two people who have a lot of problems and have difficulty communicating with other people in their lives and how they do find each other, how these things do actually happen.”
Despite this seemingly happy ending, the first act shows the audience that the parents’ plans for the future are not fulfilled later in life.
“We leave it in a hopeful place, but then we remember that it’s not like that,” said Callander. “You almost ask yourself the question: Does it always have to end up like that? Because we see that it’s going to, but maybe you have more control over you life than you think you do.” nyou
