A Steady Rain
Encyclopedia
A Steady Rain is a play by Keith Huff. With a plot similar to a real-life event involving Jeffrey Dahmer
, it focuses on two Chicago
policemen who inadvertently return a Vietnam
ese boy to a cannibalistic
serial killer
who claims to be the child's uncle. When he later becomes the man's latest victim, the lifelong friendship of the two men is threatened when it becomes clear someone must bear responsibility for their egregious failure to assess the situation accurately. The play alternates between two separate monologues and present-moment dialogue scenes.
Following readings in New York City
and Los Angeles
, A Steady Rain was staged by Chicago Dramatists in 2007. It opened on Broadway
in September 2009.
The two men offer contrasting descriptions to Internal Affairs interrogators of their harrowing experiences. They relate how Walter Lorenz, a pimp that Denny has harassed over the years, shoots a bullet through Denny's front window, causing flying glass to sever an artery in Denny's son's neck. Denny pursues Lorenz relentlessly, drawing Denny into a series of dangerous and incriminating activities. During a domestic disturbance call, the two return a frightened Vietnamese boy to a man who says he is the boy's uncle. The uncle turns out to be a cannibalistic serial killer, who eats the boy.
in February 2008. It won the Joseph Jefferson Awards
for Best New Work, Best Actor for Randy Steinmeyer, and Best Production.
Following a number of staged and table readings and an off-Broadway
workshop production
, the play began previews at the Schoenfeld Theatre on September 10, 2009 and opened officially on September 29. The 12-week engagement is scheduled to close on December 6. Directed by John Crowley
, it stars Hugh Jackman
and Daniel Craig
, making his Broadway
debut. Set and costume design is by Scott Pask
, with lighting design by Hugh Vanstone
. The producers announced that the show had broken the record for the highest weekly gross of a non-musical production on Broadway, with a weekly gross of $1,167,954 for the week ending September 20, 2009.
called the play "a gritty, rich, thick, poetic and entirely gripping noir tale." Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times
wrote, "Huff provides [the actors] 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 be happy to see this production again with an audience of real men in blue, just to take the temperature in the room."
Steve Oxman of Variety
observed, "Keith Huff's crackerjack two-hander ... 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.... 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."
In his review of the Broadway production, Ben Brantley
of The New York Times
, who was generally satisfied with the performances of Jackman and, especially, Craig, wrote, "If Mr. Huff has not managed to reweave this premise [childhood friends find themselves on opposite sides of the law and in love with the same woman] with any surprising threads, he has packed it with enough lurid incident to fill a season of Law & Order
."
Time magazine's Richard Zoglin
, naming it one of the Top 10 Plays of 2009 and ranking it at #2, commented that “Casting a couple of big movie stars in a Broadway play can cut both ways. Audiences may stand in line for tickets, but critics can put on their scowling "show-me" faces — as many did for Keith Huff's one-act play, which cast Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman as a pair of Chicago cops in crisis. Both stars were excellent, but they were wonderfully served by Huff's taut, tough-minded script, which takes potentially clichéd material — the moral challenges faced by cops on the urban mean streets — and makes it fresh and compelling.”
is interested in directing a film based on A Steady Rain.
Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism...
, it focuses on two Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
policemen who inadvertently return a Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
ese boy to a cannibalistic
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
who claims to be the child's uncle. When he later becomes the man's latest victim, the lifelong friendship of the two men is threatened when it becomes clear someone must bear responsibility for their egregious failure to assess the situation accurately. The play alternates between two separate monologues and present-moment dialogue scenes.
Following readings in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, A Steady Rain was staged by Chicago Dramatists in 2007. It opened on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in September 2009.
Synopsis
Chicago police officers Joey and Denny are longtime partners and best friends. Joey is single and lonely, and Denny is married with children; but both men have flaws and serious problems. Introverted Joey struggles with a drinking problem and secretly loves Denny's wife, Connie; angry tough-guy Denny can barely disguise his racism and cheats on Connie with a prostitute on his beat.The two men offer contrasting descriptions to Internal Affairs interrogators of their harrowing experiences. They relate how Walter Lorenz, a pimp that Denny has harassed over the years, shoots a bullet through Denny's front window, causing flying glass to sever an artery in Denny's son's neck. Denny pursues Lorenz relentlessly, drawing Denny into a series of dangerous and incriminating activities. During a domestic disturbance call, the two return a frightened Vietnamese boy to a man who says he is the boy's uncle. The uncle turns out to be a cannibalistic serial killer, who eats the boy.
Productions
A Steady Rain initially was produced by Chicago Dramatists in 2007 and then at the Royal George Theatre in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in February 2008. It won the Joseph Jefferson Awards
Joseph Jefferson Awards
The Joseph Jefferson Awards are given annually by a volunteer non-profit committee to acknowledge excellence in theatre in the Chicago area. Founded in 1968, the awards are given in tribute to actor Joseph Jefferson...
for Best New Work, Best Actor for Randy Steinmeyer, and Best Production.
Following a number of staged and table readings and an off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
workshop production
Workshop production
Workshop production is a term used to describe the first performance of a theatre production, similar to the term premiere, the difference being that a workshop production often pays less for the rights to perform the play, in exchange for losing the right to call its performance a premiere...
, the play began previews at the Schoenfeld Theatre on September 10, 2009 and opened officially on September 29. The 12-week engagement is scheduled to close on December 6. Directed by John Crowley
John Crowley (director)
John Crowley is an Irish television, theatre and film director. He is perhaps best known for his feature film debut Intermission .-Education:Crowley earned a B.A. in philosophy from University College Cork.-Career:...
, it stars Hugh Jackman
Hugh Jackman
Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre, and television.Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters...
and Daniel Craig
Daniel Craig
Daniel Wroughton Craig is an English actor. His early film roles include Elizabeth, The Power of One, A Kid in King Arthur's Court and the television episodes Sharpe's Eagle, Zorro and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles: Daredevils of the Desert...
, making his Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
debut. Set and costume design is by Scott Pask
Scott Pask
Scott Pask is an American scenic designer. He has worked primarily on stage productions in the United States, on Broadway and Off-Broadway, and in regional theatre, as well as in the United Kingdom...
, with lighting design by Hugh Vanstone
Hugh Vanstone
Hugh Vanstone is a leading British lighting designer whose freelance career began in 1991. He won the 1999, 2001 and 2004 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Lighting Design and was nominated for a Tony Award in 2005 and 2009...
. The producers announced that the show had broken the record for the highest weekly gross of a non-musical production on Broadway, with a weekly gross of $1,167,954 for the week ending September 20, 2009.
Critical reception
In reviewing the original Chicago Dramatists production, Chris Jones of the Chicago TribuneChicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
called the play "a gritty, rich, thick, poetic and entirely gripping noir tale." Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
wrote, "Huff provides [the actors] 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 be happy to see this production again with an audience of real men in blue, just to take the temperature in the room."
Steve Oxman of Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
observed, "Keith Huff's crackerjack two-hander ... 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.... 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."
In his review of the Broadway production, Ben Brantley
Ben Brantley
Benjamin D. "Ben" Brantley is an American journalist and the chief theater critic of The New York Times.-Life and career:...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, who was generally satisfied with the performances of Jackman and, especially, Craig, wrote, "If Mr. Huff has not managed to reweave this premise [childhood friends find themselves on opposite sides of the law and in love with the same woman] with any surprising threads, he has packed it with enough lurid incident to fill a season of Law & Order
Law & Order
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
."
Time magazine's Richard Zoglin
Richard Zoglin
Richard Zoglin is an American journalist and author.He has covered entertainment for Time for over 20 years, and is now a senior editor there....
, naming it one of the Top 10 Plays of 2009 and ranking it at #2, commented that “Casting a couple of big movie stars in a Broadway play can cut both ways. Audiences may stand in line for tickets, but critics can put on their scowling "show-me" faces — as many did for Keith Huff's one-act play, which cast Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman as a pair of Chicago cops in crisis. Both stars were excellent, but they were wonderfully served by Huff's taut, tough-minded script, which takes potentially clichéd material — the moral challenges faced by cops on the urban mean streets — and makes it fresh and compelling.”
Film adaptation
Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
is interested in directing a film based on A Steady Rain.