Thomas Vincent Kelly and Sal Viscuso in A Steady Rain. Photo by Heidi Bohenkamp.
In the case of A Steady Rain (in the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio through Nov 2), I must declare a prejudice: I dislike past tense material. Plays that depend on long set speeches about occurrences in the past violate, imho, ye olde creative writing saw, of “Show, Don’t Tell.”
A Steady Rain tells. In it, two Chicago police patrolmen, Joey and Denny, world-weary, partners and best buddies, one married and one living in a squalid one room flat, recount, at some length, an upsetting series of events. An attack on Denny by a spear (a sharpened broomstick) wielding street thug. A window in Denny’s home shot out. His young… I hereby virtuously refuse to reveal any more of this play’s riveting plot. On occasion, the two men direct snippets of dialogue to each other, but for the most part they tell a story – I did this, he did that. The past-tenseness of it all cannot be denied. I would greatly prefer to read the novel.
You, dear reader, may disagree with me. I hope you do because there can be no doubt that playwright Keith Huff, director Jeff Perry and the two performers, Sal Viscuso and Thomas Vincent Kelly animate A Steady Rain with passion and power. The writing surges with vitality. Huff loves these two troubled men but he refuses to let them (and us) off easy. The two performers move chairs around a bare stage. Lights effortlessly fade up to meet them (kudos here to Perry and to designers Michael Gend and Adam Femming). The play surges forward with breathless energy.
There is, in particular, a terrific performance: as the dapper but lonely Joey, Kelly is a marvel, soft-spoken yet with a tell-tale southside accent, poised yet always making us aware of the oversized pistol on his belt, lost but searching for something to make his life livable (which the play allows him to find, rest assured; again, I’m not going to reveal it). Kelly is quiet, contained, compelling.
With Viscuso as Denny I was rather less taken. “I got a problem with my mouth,” Denny tells us, and it’s true. He’s loud, violent, charmlessly Italian, demonstrative, unpredictable, an unrepentant racist – “He was a Puerto Rican gentleman,” Denny says viciously. A man only his partner could love. Viscuso accomplishes all this – and yet, there is an awkwardness in the performance, a tentativeness, a lack of power anf energy, that kept the work from being as affecting as it could. Viscuso is by no mean bad in the role, but he doesn’t match the brilliance of Kelly.
A Steady Rain is a transfer (from L.A.) as is The White Snake (which originates, I believe, at Chicago’s Goodman). Often the Guthrie does co-productions with other theaters, the recent Our Country’s Good and the upcoming Mr. Burns being examples. The G is doing our community a great service by finding prominent artists like this and giving them a local showcase. Bravo.
John Olive is a writer working in Minneapolis. His Tell Me A Story In The Dark will shortly be published by Familius, Inc. For more info you may consult his website.
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