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Hollywood thought it had a good thing going with Julia Roberts: They gave her more money than any other actress on the planet, she gave them a wall of teeth and a decent opening weekend. But somewhere along the way, we lost her to her to a series of nagging instincts: first, maternal, and now, the "serious artist" that convinced her to star in a Broadway play, which premiered last night. The reviews were not kind. Come back, Julia. There's always a place at the table for you in Oceans Umpteen. A bad review round-up:

· "Your heart goes out to her when she makes her entrance in the first act and freezes with the unyielding stiffness of an industrial lamppost, as if to move too much might invite falling." [NY Times]
· "A major problem in this production is that there's no chemistry between Roberts and the men. " [NY Daily News]

· "Two and a half hours of Julia Roberts. One hundred and fifty minutes of tedium...You would think she'd be able to handle a Southern accent, but her voice wanders all over the 48 contiguous states, sometimes within the same sentence." [Boston Globe]
· "In her Broadway premiere, Julia Robert is awkward and disappointing in a self-conscious performance that is merely a shadow of her confidence and charm on film." [AM New York]
· "HATED the play. To be sadly honest, even hated her... Why, for heaven's sake, did Julia Roberts, film star extraordinary and box-office attraction incredible, decide to make her professional stage debut at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in last night's half-baked, fully drenched revival of Richard Greenberg's 1997 play, "Three Days of Rain"?" [NY Post]
· "Ultimately, Roberts is unable to flesh out the indistinct contours of an unsatisfyingly written role." [Variety]