Some Good Monologues

Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg is one of the best plays I've never seen. By that I mean, I've read the play, and fell in love with it. The show has a very small cast, but manages do do huge things with each player.

Three Days of Rain contains one of my favorite monologues. It is an exploration of the innerworkings of a man that just lost his father, but found his father's diary. What's inside leaves much to the imagination.

But that's what the second act is for.

I mean, it really is the most extraorindary document. The first thing you notice when you start reading it is the style: it doesn't have one. And it manages to sustain that for hundreds of pages-you flip through-narratives of the most wrenching events, and the affect is entirely flat-wait-listen to this-winter of 1966-you know, when Theo is going under?
Listen to our Father's rendering:
"January 3rd-Theo is dying."
"January 5th-Theo is dying."
"January 18th"-I'll skip a little-"Theo dead."
I mean! His partner. Best and oldest friend: "Theo dying, Theo dying, Theo dead." You could sing it to the tune of "Ob-La-Di."
And it's all like that. Every entry. Years and years of-wait-this is the best of all-the first note-the kickoff, you'll-listen: "1960, April 3rd to April 5th-Three days of rain." (Beat)
Okay. Look. Let's-
Reconstruct along with me a moment. You are this young man. Ambitious, of course- what architecht isn't ambitious?And it's that moment when you're so bursting with feeling that people aren't enought, your art isn't enough, you need something else, some other way to let out everything that's in you. You buy this notebook, this volume into which you can pour your most secret, your deepest and illicit passions. You bring it home, commence-the first sacred jottings-the feelings you couldn't contain:
"April 3rd to April 5th: Three days of rain."
A weather report. A fucking weather report! (Beat. He quiets down.)
You know, the thing is with people who never talk, the thing is you always suppose they're harboring some enormous secret. But, just possibly, the secret is, they have absolutely nothing to say. (Beat)
Anyway, I want you to give me the house.

SPOILER ALERT! In the second act the three actors switch roles to play out what happened all those years ago. We get an explanation for the brevity of "Theo dying, Theo dying, Theo dead." and we learn just went on between Ned and Theo's wife during those Three Days of Rain

There are many other great monologues contained in this play. Everyone of them is listed as an overdone piece for auditions. Despite sounding like a negative, I think it really speaks to the quality of Greenberg's writing.