Playwright Richard Greenberg, the Mozart of verbal arias, brought an exquisite fluency to the American stage

Playwright Richard Greenberg was the maestro of shimmering verbal arias. His well-born characters spoke arsenic if they had been transplanted against their volition from a Henry James caller to the aboriginal 20th century. Their circumlocutions were arsenic entrancing arsenic their quality to find the astir precisely ironic words for difficult-to-name realities.

Greenberg, who died connected July 4 astatine 67 from cancer, changeable to the theatre world’s attraction with a rave New York Times reappraisal of “Eastern Standard.” Of the play’s 1988 New York premiere astatine Manhattan Theatre Club, Frank Rich wrote, “If Mr. Greenberg’s lone accomplishment were to re-create the joyousness of screwball comedies, from their elegant operation to their endlessly quotable dialogue, ‘Eastern Standard’ would beryllium simply dazzling bully fun. But what gives this play its unexpected value and subversive punch is its author’s quality to fold the traumas of his ain clip into vintage drama without sacrificing the integrity of either his troubling contented oregon his effervescent theatrical form.”

There was tremendous excitement erstwhile “Eastern Standard” moved to Broadway, wherever I saw the play arsenic a pupil the pursuing year. My acquisition didn’t rather unrecorded up to Rich’s lavish praise, but I was so dazzled by Greenberg’s New York wit, which struck maine arsenic an acutely sensitive, off-angle mentation of George S. Kaufman’s Broadway brio.

Anne Meara was the speech of the municipality successful the relation of a container woman who spurned the self-congratulatory foundation of blameworthy swells. But the play besides showcased a caller procreation of acting talent, including Patricia Clarkson and Dylan Baker, 2 classmates of Greenberg’s from the Yale School of Drama who, having been steeped successful Shakespeare and Shaw, had nary occupation delivering the rapid-fire repartee of the play’s cautiously sculpted dialogue.

But it was years later, successful “Three Days of Rain,” that Greenberg much afloat realized his gifts. I’m referring, of course, not to the 2006 Broadway premiere that occasioned the publicity earthquake of Julia Roberts’ Broadway debut, but the 1997 New York premiere astatine Manhattan Theatre Club, wherever I saw its unparalleled cast, Clarkson (in adjacent much mesmerizing form), John Slattery and Bradley Whitford.

“Three Days of Rain” was commissioned and archetypal produced by South Coast Repertory. Greenberg, successful fact, received much commissions than immoderate different playwright successful SCR’s history, 10 of which were produced by the theater, on with different of his plays.

“When we made a committedness to undertake a programme to enactment caller American playwrights and nutrient their work, Richard’s enactment stood out,” David Emmes, SCR’s co-founding creator manager with the precocious Martin Benson, said by email. “This was a writer with bonzer capableness who had large potential. Whatever the taxable matter, it was ever dealt with successful an unexpected way, but ever brimming with quality and wit.”

Patricia Clarkson and John Slattery successful the 1997 South Coast Repertory satellite premiere accumulation of Richard Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain.”

( South Coast Repertory)

The characters successful “Three Days of Rain” speech their mode into theatrical beingness — arsenic overmuch for the audience’s payment arsenic for their own. The big children of renowned architects who had tragic lives, they’re struggling to find a way guardant from the wreckage of the past. Slattery’s Walker, superb and unbalanced, with shades of his mentally sick mother, is the astir troubled. He’s a changeless root of interest for his sister, Nan (Clarkson), who hasn’t clip to dwell connected her ain fragility with her member hyper-articulating his tense breakdowns.

Pip (Whitford), the lad of the architectural spouse of Walker and Nan’s father, is simply a daytime tv histrion who has made bid with being highly palmy alternatively than a genius. His ostentatious well-being is scorned by Walker, who equates equilibrium with compromise. But Pip rebukes Walker for “changing the temperature” of each country by “tyrannical, psychosocial … fiat.”

The play, a diptych, has a 2nd enactment successful which the aforesaid actors play the roles of the parents of their first-act characters. Greenberg ironically examines the inscrutability of the past, whose main transportation to the contiguous whitethorn unrecorded successful the shared vulnerability to “error” — the last connection successful this gorgeously written play.

The Broadway revival of “Three Days of Rain,” not being arsenic confidently performed, revealed a communal frailty successful Greenberg’s dramaturgy — the inclination toward structural abstraction. His plays are held unneurotic by thematic ideas James would person enactment to bully usage successful his novels but are harder to physique a melodramatic satellite upon. (Greenberg told maine that helium dropped retired of Harvard’s grad programme successful English and American lit aft not finishing James’ “The Princess Casamassima” for a seminar, but his sensibility was the astir Jamesian of each modern American playwrights.)

There are 2 moments successful “Three Days of Rain” wherever speech connected creator matters reveals rather a spot astir Greenberg’s ain narration to his chosen creation form. Nan, invoking Goethe (something not anomalous successful a Greenberg play), refers to architecture arsenic “frozen music” (a beauteous statement of the play’s dialogue) and talks astir the mode a large gathering contains thing that can’t beryllium anticipated by the plan, nary substance however scrupulously designed.

Walker, finishing his sister’s point, explains, “There’s an intuition held successful reserve, a concealed the designer keeps until the gathering is built.” Something likewise latent inheres successful Greenberg’s dramaturgy.

Later, Nan, describing the benignant of play her parent favored erstwhile she archetypal came to New York, allows Greenberg to indulge successful immoderate delectable self-irony. She tells Pip that her parent would be 1 of those matinees “you could ne'er retrieve the crippled of, wherever the miss got caught successful the rainfall and had to enactment connected the man’s bathrobe and they benignant of did a small creation astir each different and fell successful love. And determination wasn’t adjacent a azygous bully joke, but my parent would locomotion retired aft and the metropolis seemed dizzy with this perfectly random happiness.”

That is precisely however I exited Manhattan Theatre Club erstwhile I archetypal saw “Three Days of Rain.” My euphoria stemmed arsenic overmuch from the mandarin eloquence of the characters arsenic from the unanticipated magic that tin hap erstwhile a playwright finds his assemblage of actors.

Greenberg was a prolific writer, which whitethorn person been unfairly held against him. I deliberation the bigger contented was that his tremendous gifts near galore admirers waiting impatiently for his American signifier masterpiece, which ne'er rather came together.

“Take Me Out,” astir a prima shot subordinate who breaks a taste taboo by coming retired arsenic gay, is the astir celebrated of Greenberg’s works. Winner of the Tony for champion play successful 2003, it besides won awards for Joe Mantello’s absorption and Denis O’Hare’s show arsenic cheery fiscal advisor Mason Marzac, who becomes an improbable rabid shot fan.

There’s a breathless monologue successful which Mason deconstructs the creation of shot arsenic “the cleanable metaphor for anticipation successful a antiauthoritarian society.” One of the large theatrical speeches written successful the past 25 years, this vertiginous paean to America’s pastime was nary uncertainty a origin successful O’Hare’s win. Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who was successful the Tony-winning 2022 Broadway revival, won a Tony for the aforesaid role, a testament to a supple comic performer and an evergreen part.

I respect what Greenberg attempts successful “Take Me Out,” though I don’t deliberation helium wholly succeeds. It’s not conscionable that the locker-room banter sometimes sounds similar a module lounge astatine immoderate competitory wide arts college. It’s that the swirling ideas of the play and the melodramatic operation aren’t a seamless fit.

“The Assembled Parties,” the rubric of Greenberg’s 2013 Broadway play, is an apt metaphor for the situation that playwright had successful coalescing his sparkling chat-fests into satisfying dramas. So often the full seemed somewhat little than the sum of its scintillating parts.

The smaller canvas of the one-act signifier allowed Greenberg to hone successful his theatrical vision. Perhaps this accounts for the enduring occurrence of “The Author’s Voice,” an aboriginal Kafkaesque enactment that literalizes the disagreement betwixt an artist’s primitive broadside that does the grunt originative enactment and the camera-ready broadside that basks successful the bare glory.

But Greenberg’s disappointments could beryllium worthy much than different writers’ triumphs. He wrote magnificently for actors, endowing them with powers of code that surpass the capacities of astir specified mortals. To perceive Judith Light, Jessica Hecht, Linda Lavin, Peter Frechette, Slattery oregon Whitford converse successful this heightened theatrical patois was to go instantly spellbound.

Clarkson, successful a league of her own, turned the golden of Greenberg’s prose into embodied thought and feeling. But magniloquence was hardly the full story. The susceptible dependable of Slattery’s delicate stammer successful the 2nd fractional of “Three Days of Rain” and the opinionated maternal astringency of Jenny O’Hara successful “Our Mother’s Brief Affair” astatine South Coast Repertory constituent to the assorted registers of the playwright’s wide-ranging vocabulary.

Greenberg, a somewhat reclusive personality, stayed distant from the spotlight, but was profoundly connected to the assemblage of artists who helped him find his voice. Among them, manager Evan Yionoulis, different Yale School of Drama classmate, who directed “Three Days of Rain” astatine Manhattan Theatre Club and shepherded galore different of his plays from improvement to the stage.

“Rich was a gentle antheral with an acerbic wit,” Yionoulis wrote via email. “A keen observer, helium wrote astir radical negotiating their spot successful the American landscape. Under his ever sparkling dialogue, determination is simply a almighty undercurrent of loneliness and longing that reveals his characters’ aching humanity — and our own.”

The laughter echoes down decades. I tin inactive perceive the sisters successful “Everett Beekin,” 1 of those Greenberg’s works I wanted truthful severely to similar much than I did, talking competitively astir their upwardly mobile dreams successful their mother’s Lower East Side tenement. Greenberg captures the postwar ethos successful a azygous enactment erstwhile 1 of the sisters explains to a visitant that her household lives “in Levittown for the clip being, but aboriginal on, you ne'er know.” Greenberg, a autochthonal lad of Long Island, encoded his societal observations astir the frenzied existent property hierarchy successful comic connection that seldom if ever missed its mark.