Well, maybe Oprah Winfrey liked her...

The stars came out for Julia Roberts' Broadway debut Wednesday night. Unfortunately, for Roberts, so did the critics.

"Brutal" would be too harsh a word to describe Roberts' reviews for the play Three Days of Rain; "bad" would not.

Of the big-time New York papers, the New York Post's Clive Barnes extracted the most blood with just 10 words: "Hated the play. To be sadly honest, even hated her."

As most every critic noted, there is no question who "her" is. Roberts' arrival at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater has been anticipated for months. In addition to marking her major stage debut, Three Days of Rain marks Roberts' first major project since the November 2004 birth of her twins. The 38-year-old Oscar winner hasn't appeared in a movie since the 2004 releases, Closer and Ocean's Twelve.

In Three Days of Rain, for which the $20 million woman is taking a nearly 99 percent pay cut, Roberts plays two characters--in the first act, a stolid woman meeting her brother and her friend for the reading of her father's will; in the second act, a flashback, the unhinged mother of her earlier character.

Owing to Roberts' Hollywood star power, the scheduled 12-week run of Three Days of Rain is already all but sold out. It is unlikely, then, that Thursday's notices will have any impact on the play's bottom line. On eBay, one place to come by the hard-to-come-by tickets, auction activity seemed heated, with pairs of seats going for about $125 to $800.

Faced with reviewing a critic-proof play, the theater critics gave it the old college try, which was precisely how the Washington Post's Peter Marks described Roberts' performance. "That is all she appears capable of," he judged.

In the New York Daily News, Roberts was dinged for having "no chemistry" with costars, fellow Hollywood veterans Paul Rudd (The Object of My Affection) and Bradley Cooper (Alias), and for having no star power onstage. "As mesmerizing as she is onscreen," critic Howard Kissel wrote, "she has surprisingly little stage presence."

The Post's Barnes again dug the knife the deepest, calling out Roberts' "long-faced, long-nosed and almost ordinary" looks.

"How come [she looks like this]?" Barnes asked. "In her movies, do they use magic cameras on her or something?"

The Chicago Sun-Times' Hedy Weiss was the most kind, finding Roberts "very watchable in a challenging play."

Ben Brantley's review in the New York Times was the most confessional: "My name is Ben, and I am a Juliaholic." Brantley went on to praise the Pretty Woman as a "down-home Garbo" and "feral beauty" who appears in his dreams.

But as for Julia Roberts, stage actress? While Brantley admitted to pulling for her ("We all wanted our Julia to do well."), he seemed sad to report that "she does not do well."

"You heart goes out to her when she makes her entrance in the first act and freezes with the unyielding stiffness of an industrial lamppost," Brantley wrote. "Her voice is strangled, abrupt and often hard to hear."

Brantley wasn't the only one who had trouble hearing Roberts--the other major reviewers almost invariably said the actress didn't project. On the upside, the consensus was that Roberts loosened up, along with her character, in the second act. And if it's any consolation to Roberts, Rudd and Cooper weren't hailed as Barrymores, either.

Wednesday's opener rated a standing ovation and two curtain calls, the Daily News said. Among the bold-faced names in the audience, per reports: Winfrey, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Dave Matthews and James Gandolfini.

Asked to play critic by the Daily News, Robbins said he thought Roberts "did great."

Three Days of Rain is scheduled to close June 18.