THREE DAYS OF RAIN
By Richard Greenberg
Directed by Gailee Walker Wells

Friday, July 25, 2008 at 8 pm
888 Morro Street in SLO

Click here to order your tickets online, or pay cash at the door

A year after he disappeared on the day of his father's funeral, Walker Janeway returns to New York. He takes up temporary residence in the unused space where thirty-five years earlier, his father Ned, and Ned's late partner Theo, both architects, lived and designed the great house that would make them famous. Sleepless and emotionally jangled, Walker scours the old empty space for clues, evidences or keys to the tortured family history. Discovering his father's journal hidden under the bed, he finds it as unforthcoming as his nearly silent father had been. Walker is joined by his sister, Nan, and their friend from childhood, Pip, Theo's son, to hear the reading of Ned's will. It is there that Walker forces the confrontation that the others need. After an evening of harrowing and sometimes comically inadvertent revelations, Walker disappears once more. This time he returns later that evening with a surprising, but to him, definitive solution to the family puzzle. We travel back to 1960, when Ned's journal begins. We meet the parents at the same age their children are in Act One: Ned, who seems very different from the cold monster the children conjured; the charismatic and putative genius, Theo; and Lena, Walker and Nan's mother, the delightful, troubled "Southern woman who admits to thirty." In the guise of a love story, we are offered all the information needed to devise an alternative reading of the sad, unexpectedly romantic family story.

THE CAST:

Nick Bell...................Walker/Ned
Spencer Goss............Pip/Theo
Kelli Rodda...............Nan/Lina

Issue date: 6/2/08 Section: Arts

I am a bit of a musical theater snob.

I've been lucky to have had opportunities to see the crème de la crème perform on the legendary stages of both Broadway and London's West End.

The San Luis Obispo Little Theatre's (SLOLT) performance of "My Fair Lady" was my first community theater musical experience.

As I filed into the intimate theater, a minority among a sea of senior citizens, I thought this local performance would need more than "a little bit of luck" to stack up to my previous experiences.

Armed with a pen, a notebook and cynicism, I settled into my seat and prepared for what I thought would be the longest two-and-a-half hours of my life. But as familiar tunes streamed out of the speakers above and the lights dimmed, my elitist attitude began to fade.

The cast scurried about the stage conversing in convincing Cockney accents and dressed in surprisingly elaborate costumes, except for one unlucky ensemble member in an ill-fitted red dress.

After Eliza Doolittle (Lauren Alburn) finished singing "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," I was a community theater convert and had to restrain myself from bursting into song with her.

Audrey Hepburn is to "My Fair Lady" as Julia Roberts is to "Pretty Woman." In Alburn's first performance with the SLOLT, she played a character immortalized on the big screen by the iconic Hepburn and on the stage by Julie Andrews - no pressure. She was impressive and belted out the songs as if she was a Cockney canary.

Alfred Doolittle (Mike Mesker) didn't need a "little bit of luck" to bring Eliza's pub-frequenting father to life. His rise to "middle-class morality" was both convincing and entertaining.

Alan Benson brought his professional acting experience to the role of Henry Higgins and was a delight to watch.

For those unfamiliar with the musical - based on "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw - it is a story about love and personal transformation. It's the story of Eliza Doolittle, a woman plagued by a thick accent who makes her living by selling flowers on the streets of London, and Henry Higgins, an arrogant language academic who casually comments that "the way she speaks is what keeps her in her place" and with the right coaching he could turn her into a lady. Higgins eats his words when Doolittle shows up at his door for lessons.

Both the main characters embark on personal journeys: Doolittle's from flower girl to lady and Higgins' from snooty confirmed bachelor to a gentleman finally ready to let "a woman in his life."