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You didn't have to be Nostradamus to predict that Julia Roberts' Broadway debut would bring in big money.
Now it's official, though. The new staging of Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain, starring Roberts alongside Paul Rudd and Bradley Cooper, doesn't open until Wednesday. But its first 16 preview performances have attracted 101% capacity crowds (the extra 1% accounts for standing room) and grossed $1.97 million, according to the League of American Theatres and Producers.
That's $217,000 more than last fall's hottest ticket, the revival of The Odd Couple with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, took in during its initial two weeks. Rain earned $988,198 its first week and $985,094 its second, beating Couple's $962,662 record for single-week sales for a play, set in late 2005.
Only two non-musicals have topped that: David Copperfield: Dreams and Nightmares, which made more than $1 million for five weeks in December 1996, and Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, which grossed $1.06 million in a week in May 2005. The league classified each as a "special theatrical event."
That term also could apply to Rain. It's not at every drama that you see fans hauling out cameras, verboten during performances, as producer David Stone reports. "What's exciting is that such a serious and substantial play is attracting a wide audience," Stone says.
According to Rudd, people feel they're getting their money's worth. "The response has been really strong, judging from the audience. (Roberts) is really good, the play is really good, and after 10 minutes of looking at Julia Roberts, it's about watching the play."
After the curtain call, it's a different story. "When you leave the theater, there's anywhere from 500 to 1,000 people waiting in the street, across the street," Rudd says.
Those throngs, Stone notes, include "not only people coming out of Three Days of Rain, but people from all the other shows on that street."
That wouldn't surprise Roundabout Theatre Company artistic director Todd Haimes. "It's sort of a New York axiom that people desperately want to see anything they can't get into," Haimes says. He adds that the hoopla surrounding Rain "helps make Broadway sound exciting to the outside world and perhaps draws people who wouldn't come otherwise, as audience members and artists. And that's wonderful."
Contributing: Anthony
DeBarros and Donna Freydkin
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