Plays open in waves in the Buffalo theater community. This Friday marks the second wave of the season with several auspicious openings.

THREE DAYS OF RAIN

To many people, the arrival of a new artistic director at Studio Arena Theatre may seem like last year’s news, but in reality, Friday night marks the artistic debut of Kathleen Gaffney. Her direction of Richard Greenberg’s play, Three Days of Rain, is her first artistic contribution to the Studio Arena stage since taking over artistic leadership of the venerable theater earlier in the season.

Three Days of Rain is not a blockbuster choice to introduce Gaffney’s work, but it is a strategic one.

“Originally, this slot in our season was taken with a play about Frank Lloyd Wright,” explains Gaffney while on break from rehearsal for Three Days of Rain. “I had not chosen the play, and while it was intriguing, it was a very realistic portrayal of Frank Lloyd Wright, which is to say, not very sympathetic. I was concerned that our audience might not be ready to see a local legend portrayed this way, but more importantly, the director who had made the play a success in other cities was not available. I did not want to take on a risky property without all the best artistic elements in place. So I needed a play with a small cast. I love the work of Richard Greenberg, and I realized that Buffalo is not familiar with him. Three Days of Rain requires three sensational actors. It is a beautiful, complex play, and it was on Broadway just last season.”

Last year’s Broadway sold-out production of Three Days of Rain starring Julia Roberts in her Broadway debut certainly put Greenberg’s 1997 script back on the map. Roberts, who was universally regarded as horrible in the role, inspired some of the most bizarre reviews ever written. Ben Brantley of the New York Times confessed, “My name is Ben, and I am a Juliaholic,” and additionally admitted that Miss Roberts is “one of the few celebrities who occasionally show up (to my great annoyance) in cameo roles in my dreams.”

Ahem.

In its original 1997 production, Three Days of Rain enjoyed a respectable run and was a finalist for but did not win the Pulitzer Prize. The script was praised for its elegant portrayal of alienation within a family as three actors play sister, brother, and the best friend of both in act one, and their own parents in act two. The production was notable for the poetic perfection of act one, which was not fully realized in act two. For me, the great revelation of Three Days of Rain was the exquisite performance of Patricia Clarkson as the stern and disapproving sister in act one, and as her alcoholic and emotionally fragile mother in act two—the role that Roberts stumbled through with such winceable discomfort.

For Gaffney, this is a sophisticated play by a major playwright and therefore is made to order for her audience development strategy.

“I love Greenberg’s work,” says Gaffney. “He is marvelously skillful with language. He’s been compared to Noel Coward.”

Greenberg is the author of Eastern Standard, Hurrah at Last, The Dazzle and numerous other plays never seen in Buffalo. Gaffney’s favorite Greenberg play is Take Me Out, the story of a major league baseball star who publicly announces that he is gay. But Take Me Out features a large cast and abundant male nudity, making a Studio Arena production premature in Gaffney’s audience development strategy.

“I love Three Days of Rain and it suits our needs perfectly,” she says. “The play is about our primal need to know our past and our history, especially as we approach our middle years. We begin to look at our parents in a different way, and the play asks the question, ‘Can you ever truly know your parents?’”

Gaffney knew that the success of her production hinged on excellent casting. She worked with a casting agency in New York City, and hired Michael Laurence, Sara Surrey and Eric Martin Brown.

“The casting agent reached up to his top shelf for us,” says Gaffney. “We picked from his private stock. I think you will be very impressed by these actors.”

Three Days of Rain runs through November 12 at Studio Arena Theatre.

DIE, MOMMIE, DIE!

Through its actual opening collided with the storm, with Die, Mommie, Die! Buffalo United Artists continues to indulge Buffalo’s love affair with our greatest leading lady in drag, Jimmy Janowski. This comic melodrama by Charles Busch (author of Psycho Beach Party, Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, and The Lady in Question) is a spoof of Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s and 1960s. Janowski plays Angela Arden, a once-great recording artist whose career has been off course since the tragic suicide of her identical but talentless twin sister.

As always, Janowski makes an indelible impression, this time in clothes—and jewels—provided by the Queen Mother of Buffalo drag, Miss Vicky Vogue. The show is riotously funny and notable for the startlingly confident debut of BUA’s newest zany, Jamie Cudney as Angela’s libidinous yet hostile daughter.

Directed by Chris Kelly, in addition to Janowski and Cudney, the cast features Mary Loftus, Joey Bucheker, Lawrence Rowswell and Michael Votta.

Die, Mommie, Die! continues through November 4 at the Main Street Cabaret, 672 Main Street.

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

To call Long Day’s Journey into Night Eugene O’Neill’s masterwork is to ignore the many genres in which America’s first major theatrical voice worked and the scope of his theatrical vision. Whether or not the play is O’Neill’s “best,” it is a work of genius, and seems to be irresistible to actors, despite the Herculean effort required to perform a play of its great emotional intensity—and length. (Long Day’s Journey into Night takes place over the course of a single day, but it is not true that the tale is told in real time).

The popularity of the play in Buffalo, which has seen a number of notable productions, may be a testament to our Irish values; the tortured affections, disaffections, grudges and recriminations within families have seldom played out so lavishly on stage. Fortunato Pezzimenti again directs, but this time, actors Christian Brandjes, Paul Falzone, Diane Gaidry, S’ara Kovacsi and Michael Providence get to portray the members of the long-suffering Tyrone household.

This is an opportunity for the Irish Classical Theatre Company to showcase the ensemble acting it does best, as well as the unsurpassed intimacy of the Andrews Theatre.

Long Day’s Journey into Night continues through November 26.

REEFER MADNESS

Halloween always brings out the crazy in us. At Alleyway Theatre, they are celebrating the season with a musical version of the 1937 anti-drug propaganda film, Reefer Madness, by Dan Studney and Kevin Murphy. The idea alone is deranged, and the Buffalo production has inspired a buzz of happy anticipation.

The original film offered a cautionary tale about the dangers of marijuana, in which a trio of drug dealers lures teenagers down into the depths of jazz music and moral debauchery. The stage musical, by contrast, offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of marijuana, in which a trio of drug dealers lures teenagers down into the depths of jazz music and moral debauchery.

The major difference between the film and the stage version is that the latter is funny on purpose and set to music.

Directed by Todd Warfield and starring Stephanie Bax, Jennifer Caruana, Jeffrey Coyle, Casey Denton, Chris Handley, Kim Piazza and Guy Tomassi, Reefer Madness has music direction by Theresa Quinn and choreography by Carlos Jones.

For once, the press materials actually sum up the show pretty accurately:

“You Don’t Own the Mary Jane, the Mary Jane Owns You! Caution! The content may startle you. It would not have been possible, otherwise, to sufficiently emphasize the frightful toll of the new drug menace which is destroying the youth of America in alarmingly increasing numbers. Marihuana is that drug—a violent narcotic, an unspeakable scourge…the real Public Enemy Number One!”

In the spirit of this “hit” show, director Warfield admits (or should we say promises), “I think this is the most realistic portrayal of the effect of sex, liquor and reefer on our youth that Buffalo audiences has ever seen—parents will be shocked and horrified at what your children aren’t telling you.”

In case you haven’t caught on yet, further warnings endeavor to set the appropriate tone:

“Warning:

This production contains frank adult language, adult situations, nudity, acts of rape and sexual degradation, homosexuality, gratuitous drug and substance abuse, death, dismemberment, cannibalism, physical violence, gun lust, demonology, blood, gore, democratic values and simulated human execution. No One Under 18 Will Be Admitted.”

I think that says it all.

Reefer Madness, an obvious “must see” musical, plays through November 18 at Alleyway Theatre.

THE WAR ROOM

Road Less Traveled Productions continues to forge its identity in their newly renovated Market Arcade theater space with The War Room, a new play by local playwright Darryl Schneider. The War Room tells “the story of Vietnam veteran Carl Schiller, who remains at attention even today. Carl restlessly patrols the bedroom of his eldest son, Billy—also a soldier, KIA in Iraq—desperate to find the truth behind Billy’s death. Outside the Schiller home, the world seems to have already forgotten Billy; inside, the war rages on, and Carl’s quest threatens to destroy his entire family.”

A timely piece, The War Room will mark the days leading up to and following election day with a social drama that examines the fine line between being “pro-soldier” and “anti-war.” The War Room features Peter Jaskowiak, Christina Rausa, Rich McGrath, Abby Holland, Luke Wager and Jermain Cooper, and plays through November 19 at Road Less Traveled Theater, Market Arcade Film & Arts Centre, 639 Main Street.