A STEADY RAIN
by Keith Huff
A Steady Rain tells the story of two Chicago policemen, lifelong friends, and their differing accounts of a few harrowing days that changed their lives forever.
Dialogue Sample DENNY
When I went in after her, I kept thinking the place should be ****in condemned. I followed Rhonda up to her door and when I knocked, it swung open. **** side of Uptown and not even a working lock on the door. Rhonda had slipped outta her blouse and was bending over a dresser drawer. Out of it she lifted up this tiny baby and started breastfeeding it. She had this tiny baby and sheid left it all this time closed up in a sock drawer so she could come over to my place and socialize. She mighta seen me coming cause when she turned toward me, no top on, the baby glommed on to gazunga number two, she didnt look too surprised. Christ, it was a beautiful sight. Like some ****in stain-glass Madonna. Rhonda told me close the door. I did. I just watched her with the baby. After a minute or two, she took me by the hand and led me to her bed. Outta our clothes in a second, she pulled me into her from behind and she kept breastfeeding her kid. Sounds ****in perverted, but believe me, it was the closest thing I had to a religious experience since my first communion.
Specifications A table and chairs suggesting an interview room.
Synopsis During a routine domestic disturbance call, two seasoned policemen return a panic-stricken Vietnamese boy to a man claiming to be the boy's uncle. When the man is revealed to be a cannibalistic serial killer and the Vietnamese boy his latest victim, a lifelong friendship is put to the test when one of the two has to take the fall for the screw up.
Development and Production History Staged reading, NY Theater Workshop, NYC
Staged reading, The Black Dahlia, LA
Midwest Premiere, Chicago Dramatists
Staged reading at American Theater Company
Workshop Production, The Barrow Group, NYC
Originally produced by New York Stage and Film at The Powerhouse Project
Encore staged reading at The Barrow Group Theater, NYC
Staged Reading at The Barrow Group Theater, NYC
Excerpt published in PerformInk
Staged reading at Victory Gardens
Staged reading at Chicago Dramatists
Table reading at Chicago Dramatists
Review' 'A Steady Rain' pours forth flood of cop atmospherics
By Chris Jones
Chicago Tribune theater critic
September 29, 2007
Whenever your spirit gets weary, the Chicago theater pops out a new play like Keith Huff's "A Steady Rain," a gritty, rich, thick, poetic and entirely gripping noir tale of two Chicago police officers whose inner need to serve and protect both consumes them and rips them apart.
But a stellar new Chicago play's emergence is rarely accompanied by a production with the raw guts of Russ Tutterow's simple but nonetheless powerful world premiere at the diminutive Chicago Dramatists studio.
Sweating nervously under the lights and both fighting to tell their side of the duologue from the other side of a table, actors Randy Steinmeyer and Peter DeFaria look, feel and sound exactly like what they claim to be. Cops rather than actors. Flawed humans rather than archetypes. Lifelong Chicagoans whose childhood playground was a Dan Ryan overpass and whose core values aren't up for debate or subject to the conclusions of a sensitivity seminar.
It's not that we haven't seen these kinds of characters on a stage before -- any police drama has to navigate its way around an overcooked genre. It's just that Huff creates a pair of frontline workers who manage to be intensely sympathetic and, on occasion, thoroughly repellent. Better yet, their inner conflicts are expressed with such articulate humanity that your throat gets constricted as you watch them.
Steinmeyer and DeFaria are willing to go to some very tough places here for your artistic stimulation, and I surely wouldn't miss the chance to watch them make that journey. This is far and away the best show I've ever seen at Chicago Dramatists, and I've been going there regularly for 15 years.
As professions go, theater critic and police officer aren't close cousins. But I reckon most real Chicago cops would admire this 95-minute show. For sure, the core story deals with an officer whose domestic turmoil intrudes inappropriately on his duties. You can see echoes here of the police brutality scandals that have roiled this and other police departments at darker moments in their histories. But even as he makes no excuses, Huff also makes you see why. The play seems to understand all sides. And for its backdrop, we have the very streets outside this theater.
The storytelling skills of this Iowa-trained playwright are truly remarkable. In many ways, "A Steady Rain" reminds me of "Hizzoner," the long-running theater piece about the first Mayor Daley. Both shows seem to understand the human toll of keeping order in Chicago.
Variety
*
A Steady Rain (Chicago Dramatists, Chicago; 77 seats; $28 top) A Chicago Dramatists presentation of a play in one act by Keith Huff. Directed by Russ Tutterow.
*
Joey - Peter DeFaria
Denny - Randy Steinmeyer
*
By STEVEN OXMAN
Keith Huff's crackerjack two-hander "A Steady Rain" turns out to be less like the perpetual drizzle of its title and more like a snowball that builds to an avalanche. While Huff starts with a couple of familiar characters -- good-cop, bad-cop Chicago patrolmen with alcohol and racism issues -- he deepens them into complex figures, compellingly human even when at their most despicable. The adroit character development combines with a billowing narrative to deliver some rattling emotional crescendos.
Huff's story unfolds as two separate monologues that provide competing perspectives on a series of past events, but also occasionally merge into present-moment dialogue scenes.
Denny (Randy Steinmeyer) begins as the dominant figure, a cop who takes bribes and complains he keeps getting passed over for detective, which he believes is because he's white.
He's a classic cop gone bad, but Huff invests him both with a dynamic enough personality (helped by Steinmeyer's charismatic delivery), and with a generous side, which is shown in his commitment to keep his longtime partner Joey (Peter DeFaria) away from alcohol by inviting him for dinner almost every night.
Joey isn't so innocent either, but it's clear that without Denny he'd be a different kind of cop. He views the world through less tainted lenses, and, when it comes to Denny's family in particular, through rose-colored ones.
Huff possesses a persuasively deep understanding of what makes a Joey stick with a Denny and possibly follow him over a cliff. It's a relationship with myriad angles to it, and director Russ Tutterow and his cast deserve significant credit for capturing the full range.
There's respect that's really envy, loyalty that morphs into competitiveness, even a traditional male bonding that develops a tinge of loathing. It's all pretty twisted psychologically, and therefore wholly believable.
The story itself has a terrific build as Joey and Denny deal extensively with personal issues, which causes them to make a major mistake in the field and puts them on a collision course with each other. While he could maybe pull back on a contrivance or two, the playwright smartly sticks to his conceit of piling one worse complication on top of another, effectively investing "A Steady Rain" with genuine dramatic power and a sense of true tragedy.
Combo of genuinely rich characters and spiraling yarn make this a strong candidate for future production in the small-scale commercial sphere.
Set, Tom Burch; costumes, Kerith Wolf; lighting, Jeff Pines; sound, Michael Tutaj; stage manager, Tom Hagglund. Opened Sept. 28, 2007. Reviewed Oct. 7. Runs through Oct. 28. Running time: 1 HOUR, 35 MIN.
*
Read the full article at:
http://www.variety.com/story.a...&r=VE1117935158&c=33Lifelong link intensifies for two cops in A Steady Rain
Theater Review: Bitterness and anger take a psychopathic turn
Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times Theater Critic
They are either being debriefed, or debriefing themselves. And the laser-sharp light they shine on their own souls could not be more intense or devastating were they questioning the worst perpetrators they arrested during their long years as Chicago cops.
As it turns out in iA Steady Rain,i Keith Huffis torch song of a 90-minute playonow in a searingly acted world premiere at Chicago Dramatistsothis deeply confessional debriefing become the tightly intertwined story of two men who are like brothers. Huff tells the story of a relationship of almost biblical intensity, and one riddled with love, loyalty, guilt, shame, and a sort of primal inevitability.
Joey (Peter DeFaria) and Denny (Randy Steinmeyer) are working-class Chicago guys who have known each other since Sunday school days. Now in early middle ageoand working partners on a police force that stresses the utmost political correctness, if only on the surfaceotheir emotional connection remains the same. But they have solidified into very different adults. They both want to be bumped up to detective rank, but several factors make this unlikely. Joey is doing his best to improve his chances. The self-destructive Denny is simply devoured by anger and bitterness.
Despite the bond that keeps them joined at the hip, there are radically different men. Joey, long dominated by Denny, is a bacheloroa gentle, lonely, go-along guy sho lives in a crummy apartment and at one time turned to the bottle too often. Denny is a loudmouth and a bully with a wife, kids and well-stocked house. He also is hung up on one particular prostitute whose pimp is not at all amused.
Over the course of one rainy weekend (a time period that is as action-packed as a full year), Denny slides into truly psychopathic behavior. Joey tries to save him (along the way falling into the arms of his lifelong palis wife, and everything that can go wrong does.
Under the direction of Russ Tutterow, the actors blaze with some of the most dazzling acting you will see anywhere. And Huff provides them with enough fiery, superbly rendered, often deeply poetic speeches, enough mood shifts, enough emotional cataclysms and action-packed storytelling to keep this hallucinatory roller-coaster ride in motion.
I would happy see this production again with an audience of real men in blue, just to take the temperature in the room.
Theater: A Steady Rain
Windy City Times Online Special
by Catey Sullivan
2007-10-24
Playwright: Keith Huff. At: Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago. Phone: 312-633-0630; $22-$28. Runs through: Oct. 28.
Combine the profound, terrifying sorrow that defines the bloodiest of Greek tragedies and the contemporary urgency of the latest Chicago police brutality scandal and youive got some idea of the emotionally eviscerating potency of Keith Huffis A Steady Rain. Told in 90 minutes by two characters on a stage thatis bare but for a table and two chairs, the stark power of Huffis drama is all-consuming, a syringe of Mexican Mud with a China White chaser shot straight to the heart.
Directed by the invaluable Russ Tutterow, this tale of two cops unfolds in raw, realistic monologues by lifelong best friends and career patrol grunts Joey ( Peter DeFaria ) and Denny ( Randy Steinmeyer ) . DeFaria and Steinmeyer are simply extraordinary. Together, they create a deceptive vortex; you donit know how completely youive been caught up in Denny and Joeyis violent and absurd universe until its full fury is about to be unleashed. Rain begins as a laugh-out-loud comedy, a buddy story of macho knuckleheads. But as it progresses, Rainis intensity escalates. In the end, wailing sirens and flashing red lights signify a world awash in both emotional and physical carnage.
As police officers, Joey and Denny are the kind of flat-footed plodders who give rise to stereotypes and public relations nightmares for the city. Denny is casually, indelibly racist and sexist, tossing around the ini and ici words as part of his everyday vernacular. Heis honestly perplexed when others take offense and heis ordered to enroll in isensitivity training.i Heis also dangerously angry, toxic with contempt thatis every bit as lethal as the leg injury he lets fester, untreated. Joey is Dennyis best pal and favorite punching bag, a sad-eyed drunk who is passively suicidal, downing everything this side of Sterno in an attempt to off himself without actually having to make that proactive decision to pull the trigger.
In short, these guys are prototypical *******sosexist, racist, corrupt and small-minded. Remarkably, they are also intensely sympathetic. You canit wholly despise them because Huff so completely and meticulously showsoin all its ugly, brutal detailothe world that molded them. Denny and Joey are two profoundly flawed and exhausted men flailing neck-deep in the endless, daily muck of murder, rape and addiction. Each instinctually knows he is on the verge losing all control, of free-falling through the cracks of society and sanity and into a chasm where everythingohome, health, purposeois forever lost.
With haunting attention to detail, A Steady Rain creates a haunting, instantly recognizable Chicago. From a rain-slicked overpass above the Dan Ryan to the wild edges of a Cook County forest preserve to the dire utility of a transient hotel room, the city becomes a looming, omnipresent character. Safety in this city is an illusion, even foroespecially forothose who swear to serve and protect.
New City Chicago
Highly RecommendedA Steady Rain by Keith Huff
A pair of Chicago beat cops sit in an empty room--somewhere in a precinct, judging by Tom Burchis excellent set design--and tell of a rainy summer when all hell broke loose.
The police story--of men felled by crimes they seek to thwart--is a well-worn genre, but rare is the play so purely intelligent and entertaining.
Denny is the family man, an alpha male as politically incorrect as he is cocksure. He is a teddy bear. He is an irrational prick. He is a stand-up guy about to fall to his knees.
Playwright Keith Huff has an ear for the way men like this talk, the old-style Chicago sound, the bruising casualness (and hilarity) of their insults.
You canit fault Dennyis logic, which is what makes the character (cunningly played by Randy Steinmeyer) so much more than a clichE: "They want tolerance from me," he says of the "gangbanging ethno-**** in the back seat" of the squad car, "they should start tolerating my intolerance." His undoing is a hooker with a "heart-shaped pillow of a derriEere" and an "upper frontal superstructure" of leaky tits, heavy with motheris milk. This is language as music, and Steinmeyeris face is a catalogue of emotions: seen-it-all indifference; squinty loquaciousness; something Iid call Chicago incredulous (surprised, but not); and, tucking his chin, a do-not-****-with-me glare that is intense and unyielding.
The other cop is Joey, a sensitive loner from the neighborhood and Dennyis partner (Peter DeFaria, in a nicely shaded performance). He is a reformed "elbow-bender," once so far gone down the bottle "you were spoon feedini yourself sterno for breakfast," Denny says, and you can feel the shame in DeFariais entire demeanor. Theyive known each other "since kinnygarten." Both have been passed over for promotions. They will test the boundaries of their friendship, protecting and betraying one another in a story that seems torn from the headlines it feels so true.
As a night of theater, the production accomplishes what film can not--a narrative that requires your imagination as active participant. I have a very clear picture in my mind of the people and places and events described herein: Dennyis house, where his large-screen TV is splattered to pieces; the rainy night in an alley when a naked, sobbing Vietnamese teenager wrapped himself around Dennyis midsection; a prostituteis bedroom, where her baby lies asleep in a sock drawer.
Huff knows how to paint a picture, and his work here is vivid and special--you want to box up the script and take it home with you. He calls the play a "duologue," a do-si-do of intersecting monologues traded off like hot potatoes, occasionally turning into full-fledged moments of dialogue. It is a clever storytelling technique. But what makes the show (under Russ Tutterowis flawless direction for Chicago Dramatists) so addicting is Huffis combination of Hollywood-style police procedural (vaguely "Law & Order"-ish) and his insight into what makes people tick. Specifically, the shift in moral perspective that can take hold once you become a parent--sending you off the deep end if youire not careful.
- Nina Metz
Powerful acting drives gripping police drama
By Barbara Vitello, Published: 10/5/2007 2:26 AM | Updated: 10/5/2007 6:43 AM
*
Watching Keith Huff's unrelenting "A Steady Rain" is like watching the entire season of "The Shield" condensed into 90 minutes.
Forget must-see TV. Director Russ Tutterow's riveting production of Huff's taut, gritty cop drama -- a familiar tale about longtime partners whose friendship is tested when one of them starts to spiral out of control -- is must-see theater.
Much of the credit goes to the galvanizing, truthful work by Peter DeFaria and Randy Steinmeyer, whose stormy, husky, brawling performances as a pair of flawed, conflicted cops are the acting equivalent to Carl Sandburg's "Chicago." Their performances are so genuine, their relationship so natural, you'd think they've been patrolling a beat together for years.
A side note: If Chicago Dramatists extends or remounts the show, Tutterow might consider having DeFaria and Steinmeyer alternate roles the way the way Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly did during the Broadway run of Sam Shepard's "True West" in 2000. I have no doubt this talented duo have the acting chops to pull it off.
Everything about this complicated tale of friendship, envy, betrayal and duty feels authentic -- from Huff's spot-on South Side, CPD patois to DeFaria's sensitive Joey, a recovering alcoholic trying to conform to the department's PC protocol and Steinmeyer's ferocious Denny, an old-school cop adrift, whose behavior "on the job" threatens his family. Add to that Tom Burch's drab interrogation room with its grimy windows, dull walls and scuffed linoleum; Jeff Pines' subtly shifting lighting and Mike Tutaj's urban soundscape and you have the makings of a Chicago classic.
Huff, a Chicago Dramatists resident playwright, mines familiar ground in his self-described duologue in which Joey and Denny recount for the department's internal affairs division the events surrounding a botched domestic disturbance call that resulted in the death of a teenage boy. (The retelling of which elicited an audible gasp from Sunday's audience, whose members undoubtedly recalled the grisly, true-life event that inspired it).
"A Steady Raini is a thoroughly engrossing examination of the toll the job takes on those sworn to serve and protect, and how amorphous the line between criminal and cop can be.
Chicago Sun-TimesThe Hot Seat
October 22, 2007
BY CENTERSTAGE STAFF Talk2Us@CenterstageChicago.com
Theater
"A Steady Rain"
Keith Huff, a humane and novelistic local playwright, has been chugging along just beneath the radar for many years. But the ecstatic critical response to his latest premiere, a cop drama now playing at Chicago Dramatists, is going to make Huff hard to ignore this season. The story is nothing new: Two police officers, childhood friends, are permanently affected by a routine call gone wrong. The key is in the execution. Critics rave over Huff's storytelling and pitch-perfect Chicago cop dialogue, along with the painfully realistic performances of stars Randy Steinmeyer and Peter DeFaria.
TimeOut Chicago
A Steady Rain
Keith Huffis police drama, about the changing fortunes of a beat-cop duo in the wake of a drive-by shooting, strikes more than a few familiar notes. Thereis a hint of Richard Gereis breathtaking bad-cop turn in Internal Affairs in alpha-male Denny, whose eventual eclipse by his good-cop partner comes straight from the second-banana palace-coup playbook. And the picture Rain paints of official misconduct recalls any number of recent serve-and-protect scandals. But Huffis recombination of these elements offers pleasant surprises.
Convincingly set in Chicago, the play opens with a muscular description of the strike on family-man Dennyis home, which leaves his young son in critical condition. As the details of both preceding and subsequent events unfold and the Bad Lieutenantnlevel corruption underlying Dennyis callousness comes out, his recovering-alcoholic partner, Joey, slips bit by bit into the domestic life that Denny, his buddy since childhood, has essentially abandoned. Beneath the obvious paradoxoin iproviding fori then avenging his family, Denny loses everythingolies a more insidious one: While irredeemable, Denny is a sympathetic monster; while gentler and more self-aware, Joey is still a backstabbing creep. Both are bad cops; itis just that one is much worse.
Huffis demanding narrative model of dueling first-person recollections is authoritative, sold by hardscrabble street vernacular and no-nonsense performances from DeFaria and Steinmeyer. Excellent, evocative sound design by Mike Tutaj and focused, waste-free directionothe best Iive seen from Tutterowoput this over the top.oBrian Nemtusak
Review: A Steady Rain
Two bad cops and a steady stream of trouble
Ross Hersemann, Loyola Phoenix Issue date: 10/3/07
Everyone has that day when it seems it can't get any worse. Everything is going to hell all around you, and no matter how hard you try to stay afloat, it seems that your struggling only makes you sink deeper and deeper. Chicago Dramatists' latest production, A Steady Rain, is the story of two Chicago policemen caught in this vicious circle. An avalanche of bad luck keeps falling as these two victims of circumstance try to fight their way out of a series of unfortunate events and restore balance to their lives.
Denny (Randy Steinmeyer) and Joey (Peter DeFaria) have been friends since childhood. Having grown up together and now partners on the police force, they have achieved everything they have ever dreamed of Oe almost. They have been denied promotion to detective three times each, Denny makes money on the side by shaking down prostitutes and pimps on Chicago's South Side to make ends meet and Joey is a middle-aged bachelor stuck in a bottle and a seedy apartment. Though life doesn't seem like it can get much worse, fate deals the two partners another bad hand as Denny's family is attacked. When gunfire destroys Denny's living room window and showers his family with shards of glass, he and Joey get caught up in a personal war with Chicago's most hardened criminals.
A Steady Rain is an intricately involved story of family, duty, love and betrayal. By focusing on the curveballs life pitches to every one of us it shows how one weak moment can be the catalyst for an entropic spiral into hell.
Perhaps most impressive about the play is the way it expresses such strong emotion through the minimalist format of the production. Steinmeyer and DeFaria act on a set which bears close resemblance to an interrogation room. Utilizing a dualogue, Denny and Joey recite the events of the story. Steinmeyer gives a compelling tearjerker performance. His character Denny truly captures the frailty of the human spirit as a devoted husband and father overwhelmed with the weight of the world on his shoulders. DeFaria convincingly demonstrates how hard it is to be a true friend to someone so self-destructive.
It is hard to tell whether fate has been more merciless toward Denny or Joey. Denny's youngest child is in the hospital and may not survive. Denny is also having an affair with a prostitute who is in a personal war with her pimp and is addicted to morphine. Joey is Denny's alcoholic best friend and is in love with Denny's wife, Connie. He has to clean up every one of Denny's messes by defending Denny's unsanctioned and dangerous behavior to their superiors on the police force, and it is clear that if it were not for Joey, Denny would have gone to jail long ago. Director Russ Tutterow's devastating production begs the question: Which is more destructive, being in a train wreck or watching that train wreck and knowing there is nothing you can do to stop it?
A Steady Rain is a production of stunning performances. Steinmeyer and DeFaria truly capture the human will to strive forward in the face of adversity. Even when broken and defeated, Denny and Joey push on. A Steady Rain shows people just trying to find a silver lining out of the storm clouds on the horizon. However, when there isn't one to be seen, remembering your umbrella is the best defense.
5 STARSA Steady Raini
Written by Keith Huff
By Brian Kirst, Contributing writer, Chicago Free Press
With one eye zeroing in on neo-noir crime drama and the other targeting the emotional complexities of male friendships, Chicago Dramatistsi premiere production of Keith Huffis iA Steady Raini hits its dramatic targets with point-blank precision. That it also loosely examines the aftermath of one of Illinoisi fairly recent real life crime tragedies is the bloody cherry on an already battle-scarred cake.
Huffis drama is a monologue-based excursion into the dark souls of two Chicago beat cops and lifelong best friends. The volatile Denny has recently helped alcoholic Joey conquer his most recent fight with the bottle. The relentless month-long rainfall theyire experiencing is a portent of despair though, not hope. Soon, family man Dennyis affair with a local prostitute sends her pimp into revenge mode. The bullets fired one glass-shattering evening signal the beginning of Dennyis rage-filled downfall. Frightened by his anger, Dennyis wife begins to find understanding in Joeyis arms. Meanwhile the tension between the men causes them to misjudge an important call for help. With their jobs on the line, the bonds between the two are irreparably altered and their lives are permanently transformed.
Huff beautifully delineates his two characters. Joey, the kinder soul, struggles to enrich himself while trying to remain true to the often-brutal Denny. Denny, involved in the scabrous underworld of cops on the take is also a devoted friend and family man. He is part savage, embracing his excessive inner nature, and part misguided missionary, trying to tame the wilds of his own soul. Ultimately, Joey and Denny come alive on stage and are evidence of Huffis powerful skill. Huffis plot, meanwhile, is also wildly detailed and engaging.
Most interesting is the audienceis realization of who these characters represent in our local crime history. To examine the emotional complexities and pains of a pair who have been publicly demonized is a bold and intriguing concept. It is also one that is worthy of revelation within the showis context and not to be spoiled here in the printed word. Director Russ Tutterow moves the tale swiftly and efficiently along. His main strength is the detailed, nuanced performances he is able to cultivate from his two worldly performers. As Joey, Peter DeFaria brings a bruised demeanor and strangled goodness directly to the fore. Joeyis struggles are rendered with sensitive perfection and DeFaria manages to deliver the characteris wounded heart right into the audienceis hands. Randy Steinmeyeris crooked Denny, meanwhile, is a tour de force portrayal of a conflicted personage pushed to the limits. Steinmeyer fully explores all the avenues of Dennyis twisted existence. He creates a living, breathing entity. He is your neighbor, the man on the news, the guy sitting next to you watching the Sox game at Higginsi Tavern. Ultimately, whether passionately deconstructing the deep layers of love in male friendship or investigating the seamy underbelly of corruption in the streets of Chicago, Chicago Dramatistsi iA Steady Raini provides an emotionally potent evening at the theater.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/lo...ct05,1,3620967.storychicagotribune.com
HOTTEST TICKET ■
October 5, 2007
A STEADY RAIN: Keith Huff's "Steady Rain" is a gritty, rich, poetic and entirely gripping noir tale of two Chicago police officers whose need to serve and protect both consumes them and rips them apart. A stellar new Chicago play is rarely accompanied by a production with the guts of Russ Tutterow's world premiere at Chicago Dramatists. Sweating under the lights and fighting to tell their side of the story, actors Randy Steinmeyer and Peter DeFaria look, feel and sound exactly like what they claim to be: cops, rather than actors. Flawed human beings, rather than archetypes. Lifelong Chicagoans whose core values aren't the result of a sensitivity seminar. It's not that we haven't seen these kinds of characters on a stage before, but Huff creates a pair of frontline workers both intensely sympathetic and, on occasion, repellent. Their inner conflicts are expressed with such articulate humanity, your throat constricts as you watch them.
'Steady Rain' feels like an inside job
Chris JonesChicago Tribune, October 9, 2007
After I'd seen Keith Huffis terrific, breakout new play "A Steady Rain" at Chicago Dramatists, two thoughts came immediately to mind: This is a writer who knows all about the thud of middle age. And this is a writer who knows Chicago cops.
One must beware of biographical fallaciesostellar playwrights can often write with authority on topics youid think they know nothing about. But in the case of Huff, the personal details of the man were as I thought. Heis hardly an overnight success. Heis been developing plays at Chicago Dramatists since the early 1980s. "I guess," the wry Huff said in a recent telephone interview, "Iive been knocking on doors for a very long time."
Those knocks paid some dividends. His prior work has been developed at the Eugene OiNeill Theater Center and produced at the Cricket Theatre in Minneapolis and Studio Arena in Buffalo. He knows a few famous playwrightsoand the well-known director Eric Simonsen directed his first work at the Bailiwick a couple of decades ago. Even before its superb Dramatist production, the word was out in some theater circles about the uncommon merits of "A Steady Rain," a gripping tale of two Chicago police officers on the front lines.
The Steppenwolf Theatre had showed some interest. And Russ Tutterow, who runs the playwright-incubating Dramatists, has admired Huff for years. "If I could do one of Keithis plays every season, I would," Tutterow says. "But unfortunately, weire not that kind of theater."
So to date, Huff hasnit been able to quit his day joboheis the long-standing managing editor of Orthopedic Knowledge Online. "Iim vested as an employee," he says, "although people here still make jokes about when will I be having my major success and leaving them."
But all that doesnit explain how Huff gets so skillfully inside the skin of two Chicago police officers. That feels like an inside job. And, to a point, it is. Huff married into a family of cops. "My father-in-law, Harold Hieber, was the commander of Area Five," Huff says. "And my brother-in-law is a retired policeman. They always said, eif you can imagine it, it happened.i"
"A Steady Rain" deals with an officer who has fallen far from moral propriety and a partner who cannot catch him. But even though this confessional play deals with the dark side of police work, it does so with striking compassion, humanity and respect. "One police officer who had read about the play asked me if it showed the police in a good light," Huff said. "I didnit know how to answer that. It doesnit romanticize them. It doesnit denigrate them. It treats them in a human light."
And it makes for a gripping 90 minutes of theater.
Chicago Reader
Highly Recommended!
A STEADY RAIN Keith Huff's 100-minute bad cop/worse cop confessional drama details cascading calamities, as two of Chicago's less than finest--self-proclaimed partners in crime--encounter one too many moral roadblocks and deliver an onslaught of bad choices (Huff compresses the mistakes of two careers into a matter of days). Peter DeFaria's anguished, heavy-drinking Joey must break from or give in to the fatal tailspin of his racist partner, Denny (Randy Steinmeyer, operating on the character without anesthetic). Under Russ Tutterow's pile-driving direction, the characters' dueling testimony delivers the excruciating excitement of a circumstantial tragedy. If these "blue blues" sound familiar, here they're made wrenchingly direct. This show is in-your-face--but also in your gut and heart. --Lawrence BommerA play of enormous power, compassion and theatricality.
--Beth Fargis-Lancaster, Executive Producer of NYSAF'S Powerhouse Theater
The latest work by Chicago playwright Keith Huff is gripping. Along the way, the play asks questions about love and loyalty, family and friendship, power and control, what it means to be a cop, what it means to be a father. The characters are riveting from the moment they step out on the bare stage until the inevitable, tragic end.
--PerformInk
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