Theater Review—

A Steady Rain, A Downward Spiral, At TheaterWorks Hartford

By Julie Stern

HARTFORD — A Steady Rain is Keith Huff’s portrait of a tough Chicago patrolman whose life embarks on a downward spiral over the course of a rainy summer. As directed by Tazewell Thompson and currently being offered at TheaterWorks Hartford, the production a gripping, on-the-edge-of-your-seat drama that keeps audiences transfixed. Confided to the audience in alternating fragments by Denny, and his partner, Joey, this two character play captures the tension and stress of being a cop, as well as the fragility of memory, and the human capacity for self deception and rationalization.

Best friends since childhood, brothers in arms, the pair drive a squad car together, having been passed over for the third time for promotion to plain clothes detective. Denny blames it on reverse racism, but he says he doesn’t care. To him, detectives are paper pushers; it’s the beat cops out on the street who really fight crime and keep people safe.

At the beginning it would seem that Denny has all the advantages: a beautiful wife, two kids, a house, a dog,  flat screen televisions, and the ultimate symbol of achievement, selection as a Nielsen family. Joey, in contrast, lives in a one room hovel and drinks way too much- as Denny sees it, to compensate for all the good things in life he doesn’t have. In an attempt to heal his friend by exposing him to life’s advantages, he insists that Joey be a regular guest in his home, playing with his kids, eating Connie’s lasagna dinners, and meeting the single women invited expressly for him. At this stage it would seem that Denny is the rational, reasonable man.

But there is a dark side here. At least one of the women Denny provides is a hooker. Dealing his own brand of street justice, Denny has been collecting payoffs from a string of prostitutes in exchange for protection from both the law, and the predatory pimps who prey on the girls. This leads to an escalating entanglement of violence involving a vicious criminal named Lester, and Denny’s increasingly paranoid resolve to do “whatever it takes” to protect his family.

While Joey looks on in a mix of steadfast loyalty and anguished concern, Denny becomes increasingly enraged, and viciously brutal. The kid who always won the “last man standing” rock fights of their boyhood, has morphed into a stubborn vigilante, who won’t follow protocol, or radio for back-up, as he pursues his enemies, at an ever increasing cost.

The Denny whom we first got to know through his salty but affectionate charm, as he celebrated the family who were the core of his existence,  morphs into an obsessed bully, even as he justifies his every “mistake” and “accident” as reasonable, given that he is putting his life on the line for “decent” people. And Joey, who has been like a brother to Denny since their days in kindergarten, has to decide how far he is willing to go,  and at what point he would be willing to betray his friend, in order to regain a life of his own.

A Steady Rain has the gritty realism of the big city streets, building in a number of horrifying incidents drawn from real events. It captures the dilemma of police immersed in a world of lowlife and degradation, who are trying to maintain some personal standards of civility and decency. Aaron Roman Weiner is magnetically compelling as Denny, while Kyle Fabel is moody and ridden by secret shame as Joey.

For excellent acting and trenchant psychological portraits, this is a riveting piece of work: think Law and Order as written by Arthur Miller.

(Performances continue until May 8 at TheaterWorks Hartford. Call 860-527-7838 or visit TheaterWorksHartford.org for curtain and ticket details.)