THEATER Review| CHRIS HEWITT
"I love the guy," each of the two characters in "A Steady Rain" says of the other. But do they really?
The characters occasionally have actual conversations in Keith Huff's play, but mostly the pair of Chicago cops deliver a series of monologues directly to the audience.
In a piece that could just as easily be called "A Toxic Masculinity," the men's narratives gradually begin to reveal cracks in their friendship and work partnership (female characters are alluded to, but they're offstage or, in a couple instances when we're meant to imagine them as part of the action onstage, they're immediately forgotten).
Soon enough, barely submerged jealousies and long-term resentments emerge — and, although the play begins with the two of them grousing about unfairly being passed over for promotions, it quickly becomes clear that crooked police work, spousal abuse and casual racism all figure into the schisms that grow, right in front of our eyes, between Joey (Peter Christian Hansen) and Denny (Dustin Bronson).
"A Steady Rain" offers two meaty roles, but it's not an especially nimble piece of writing. For one thing, it's far too plot-packed for the slight play to support. For another, I can't be the only person who's wary of direct-address plays in which we're told everything and shown nothing, because all of the action of the play has happened before we even clicked the "buy tickets" button on our computers. And, for a third, Gremlin Theatre's production errs in sticking an intermission into a play that is generally performed without one. (Perhaps it's there so more brewskis can be sold at neighboring Lake Monster Brewing?)
Director Ellen Fenster's dynamic staging, supported by two authoritative performances, builds tension effectively in the first half, only to see much of it dissipate at the break.
Inspired by a real-life instance of police incompetence, "A Steady Rain" gets some of the suspense back in the second act, as Denny and Joey's stories diverge, revealing the poison that may have coursed through their relationship from its very beginnings.
I'm reluctant to say much about the source of the shift in their relationship, and I would recommend not reading about the play if you're thinking of attending (for instance, the first sentence of the Wikipedia entry reveals a detail we don't learn until the play is two-thirds over), but I can say that the denouement delivers on the awfulness the first half seems to promise, and then some.
Although the evening is well-produced on Gremlin's thrust stage, there's a nagging sense that the cinematically structured show wasn't even meant to be a play.
Huff used it as a calling card to snag writing gigs for "Mad Men" and "House of Cards," and its shifting moral ground, authentic police detail and steady stream of shocking revelations make it feel very much like an episode of "The Wire" that never aired because it wasn't quite up to snuff.
 chris.hewitt@startribune.com 612-673-4367 • Twitter: @HewittStrib
