[ back ]
Gripping drama drips through 'Steady Rain'
(by Herb Hammer - March 03, 2011)
THEATER, BY HERB HAMMER
Gripping drama drips through 'Steady Rain'
Joey and Denny are a couple of frustrated patrolmen. Best friends since childhood, they long to be promoted to detective. They never make it. Joey calls it reverse discrimination. We later find there are other reasons. As partners, they comb the streets of Chicago looking for trouble and finally making their own.
Keith Huff's compelling drama "A Steady Rain" draws you in fairly early and keeps you there. The Dobama Theatre production in Cleveland Heights has you so involved you often forget there are only two characters, rather than the dozens Joey and Denny tell us about.
Through monologues and dialogue, the two wander the raked Dobama stage. Denny, the tough cop, lives on the edge of the law yet is certain he's as good a cop as he can be. A family man, he sees nothing wrong with occasionally smacking his wife and nothing wrong at all with taking small payoffs.
Joey is the brooding bachelor, living alone, drinking too much and spending too much time at Denny's house and too close to Denny's family.
As the gripping story unfolds and as Denny and even Joey begin to spiral downward, you can't help but believe you are seeing the plot unfold in real time. Both Denny and Joey speak of the recent past as though they are being interrogated.
Mr. Huff brings you into his intricate, riveting plot mostly through Denny, a devoted family man, though often brutal and finally deadly.
The play presents itself as a puzzle gradually being pieced together. The two characters are surprisingly complex. Joey guards his anger, while Denny, though likable, is an unpredictable menace who is just as inclined to run a car off the road as he is to shoot an enemy.
As directed by Joel Hammer, we almost feel the terrible weather. We see Joey releasing a small boy into the hands of a maniac. We can feel the needs of Joey's wife. And though none of these characters ever appear, Jeremy Kendall, as Denny, and Scott Plate, as Joey, make them live through their tense narration.
Mr. Kendall, the smaller of the two, is a fascinating Denny, seething inside, explaining his side of the law and, while protecting his beloved family, nearly destroying them. The actor is unsettling, explosive and astonishing in the role.
Mr. Plate plays Joey as someone you are trying to get to know. He is a devoted friend and somewhat afraid of Denny yet ready to take his own place when the chips are down. His Joey, though, certainly not the perfect cop, conceals his ability to take over before the final curtain. He's exceptional.
There is little in the way of foreshadowing in Mr. Huff's gritty story. It's more like misfortune that reigns down on Denny, something like the weather he has no control over. We've seen cops like Denny and Joey on television and in the movies but never like this, never in the throes of never-ending friendship being ripped apart.
"A Steady Rain" is an amazing piece of work like nothing we have seen before, two actors and a gripping drama that takes your breath away.
The play runs through March 20.
[ back ]
