“A Steady Rain” Pours Cop Drama at the Odyssey Theatre

“A Steady Rain” has you on the edge of your seat as two Chicago cops played by Thomas Vincent Kelly and Sal Viscuso divulge a harrowing account of unfolding events, one more shocking than the next. The acting combination of these two older men is intense and truly a steady rain of calamity. Do cops always follow the laws? Are all cops good people or do they have a pass as to what crimes they can commit? How can families be protected when retaliation occurs against their own families? Will this duo remain friends? Do people make the right choices in the face of adversity? What stressors cause certain choices that could lead to lifelong results?

This poetic duologue spins out of control with Thomas Vincent Kelly (Bedfellows for The New American Theatre, King Lear for Antaeus) and Sal Viscuso (Clybourne Park at Portland Center Stage, Father Timothy Flotsky on ABC’s Soap). This riveting drama by Keith Huff (Mad Men, House of Cards) opened February 22 at the Odyssey Theatre in West L.A. for an eight-week run through April 20.

This two person play has dialogue and monologues, so the two men talk about a dozen or more characters that you seem to know, as well as turn to each other and act out formal scenes.

Steppenwolf Theatre co-founder Jeff Perry (Scandal) directs the Los Angeles premiere.

“Keith has created an inexorable tragedy that’s very Shakespearean about two guys who have the best of intentions,” says Perry. “The narrative emerges out of a chaotic stewpot of events, yet it’s all perfectly clear and highly authentic. It’s a beautiful thing – a very sophisticated, deft and unique piece of storytelling.”

Initially produced by Chicago Dramatists in 2007 and then at the Royal George Theatre in Chicago in 2008, A Steady Rain won the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work. In 2009 it opened on Broadway in a production that starred Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig and broke box office records. Time magazine named A Steady Rain one of the Top 10 Plays of 2009, noting that “Huff’s taut, tough-minded script takes potentially clichéd material — the moral challenges faced by cops on the urban mean streets — and makes it fresh and compelling.”

“I wrote A Steady Rain along with two other plays, a kind of a loose trilogy of Chicago cop plays,” said Keith Huff in an interview. “When you see these genres play out on film or TV, there’s almost a prescribed morality that they’re handing you. I wanted to take those established genres and thread through them the moral obverse of what we’re used to seeing. In my trilogy, sometimes the good guys are the bad guys, and vice-versa.”

Keith Huff has written the film adaptation of A Steady Rain for Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson (EON Films); original pilots for HBO, Steven Spielberg/Dreamworks TV and AMC; and was writer/co-producer for Season One of the NetFlix series House of Cards, featuring Kevin Spacey, and Season 4 of AMC’s Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning series Mad Men, for which he won a 2011 Writers Guild Award (Best Drama Series). Other plays include Big Lake Big City, The Detective’s Wife, Pursued By Happiness, and The Bird and Mr. Banks. A Steady Rain continues to be produced across the US and around the world, including in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela. Huff has an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Playwright’s Workshop, is a Resident Alumnus at Chicago Dramatists, and is the recipient of a Joseph Jefferson Award, the Cunningham Prize, the John Gassner Award, the Berrilla Kerr Award, and three Illinois Arts Council Playwriting Fellowships.

Perhaps best known as White House chief of staff Cyrus Beene on ABC’s Scandal, Jeff Perry is a co-founder of Chicago’s internationally acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre, The School at Steppenwolf, Steppenwolf Classes West and Steppenwolf Films. Directing credits at Steppenwolf include Educating Rita (in Chicago and Off Broadway), The Hothouse, The Homecoming, Little Egypt (world premiere) and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Acting credits at Steppenwolf include Uncle Vanya, August Osage County (also N.Y., London, Sydney), Balm in Gilead (also Off-Broadway), The Time of Your Life (also Seattle, San Francisco), Picasso at the Lapin Agile (world premiere), The Grapes of Wrath (also Broadway and London), The Caretaker (also Broadway) and Streamers (also Kennedy Center).