All The Basic Groups: Sex, Booze, Drugs and Murder...
...served up by two terrific actors
You have to list them alphabetically, these two, Todd Allen Durkin and Gregg Weiner, because you sure can't do it by talent. There's no cutting contest when these two take the stage; there's too much love for their craft.
So what you get is Keith Huff's A Steady Rain hammering the audience at GableStage for a fast, dark ninety minute tale of two Chicago cops, life long buddies, frustrated with their careers and their lives.
Weiner, as Denny, has the family, wife, kids, dog and he also has the hookers kicking back, the pimps and the pushers sliding when he deems it's appropriate to help his fellow man, and himself. His partner, Joey, played by Durkin, eases through life, with too much booze, too little energy but knowing what's right and trying to do it. Especially with Denny's wife.
These guys haven't come far in the force, bypassed for rank, still in a squad car, refusing to be pc and knowing every mutt by name and record.
The play's format is a tad awkward, the actors breaking the fourth wall with their wonderfully Chicago accented storytelling and then abruptly interacting, tending to break the flow of immersion. But these two, Durkin and Weiner, make these transitions so smoothly that there is only a tiny feeling that, man, this would have been a terrific piece without the wall breaking. Show, don't tell. And I'm not knocking Joe Adler's direction. He's doing what's called for, and doing it well.
The title, A Steady Rain, tells a lot here. It's Chicago noir: the silhouetted, gorgeously lighted skyline, the elevated's steel girders, the brilliance of the sound and lights of the passing train, the walk-ups, the brutality, the bleakness of the imagined streets, the destroyed lives in the carefully darkened scenes.
Typical of GableStage, the set by Lyle Baskin, the lights by Jeff Quinn, and the sound by Matt Corey match the excellence on stage.
See A Steady Rain through April 1 at GableStage, 1200 Anastasia Avenue, Coral Gables. 305-445-1119 http://www.gablestage.org/