Review: A STEADY RAIN at the Fulton - A New Take on the Cop Tale

For those who followed the horrifying news at the time it was disclosed, the saddest part of the story of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was the part in which an Asian victim escaped from Dahmer's clutches, was found by the police, and Dahmer turned out to have convinced them to return the non-English-speaker to his less than tender mercies.

Late in the story in A STEADY RAIN, by Keith Huff, we discover that the two police officers - oh let's be real, these guys are cops, let's just say it - who are the subjects of each other's partnerly scrutiny and concern on the stage are the two who let Dahmer take the kid back and finish him off. Joey and Denny are two archetypal Chicago cops, the one a drinker and a loner, the other a respectable-looking family man on the take, each one with a different interpretation of the ethics of protecting and serving. They're telling, as well as showing, the days and nights of a miserable, wet, steaming Chicago summer, the one where everything went to hell. And the Dahmer incident may have been the single most horrifying event, but it wasn't necessarily the key to hell's doors for these two.

It's a small show but it's a storyteller's tour de force. On Broadway, it might not have been a sales success without its surefire hit cast of Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig, but it's masterfully written by Huff as a two-hander storytelling re-enactment of the bad old days. What it needs to be successful as a show in and of itself is not star power, but two powerful storytellers. At the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, director Marc Robin presents the show with two particularly fine tellers of the cops' tale, Mitch Poulos as drinking loner Joey and Fran Prisco as the compromised home-loving Denny. If Joey, in his rumpled suit, reminds you of Jerry Orbach in LAW AND ORDER, or if his acting style makes you think of Alec Baldwin, that's fine. It takes no work to realize that Joey was Daniel Craig's part on Broadway, that he's the Irish storyteller who's quick with a drink, a joke, an inapposite observation, and that for all the man's faults, you're more than willing to listen to him. It's only that, as you listen, you realize that his story can come to no good end.

Fran Pisco is Denny, the Italian homebody with the wife and kids, the one who's running a protection racket for the local hookers on his beat - and despite his best storytelling efforts, you're never quite convinced that the hooker he tries to fix Joey up with is the first or only one he's personally tried out. Where Joey is a master of oversharing, Denny tries to explain himself with walls up around him, playing himself close to his chest. Joey is no saint, but it's possible that Denny is even less of one.

This is a story of how two men who have been friends from childhood and who walk the thin blue line together come closely together and ultimately break apart, for morality tales depend upon such things. It's a story of how two men together can be less, rather than more, than the sum of their parts, and how one may rise above the other, and still not be very far up. In fact, it's particularly deep material placed into a particularly slight vehicle to carry it, rather like loading military hardware into a Volkswagen. Only some expert handling can carry it, and Robin, Poulos, and Prisco do indeed provide that for the Fulton's audience.

If there's any issue with the play, it's that the old adage "show, not tell" sometimes has its merits. While some scenes are re-enacted by the two on stage as if the matter were occurring at the time, most of the time one or the other is recounting what happened back when, as the other either listens or fades out. Yet perhaps there are things best left to the imagination rather than shown - Denny's child in the hospital after a shooting, Joey's being left in the rain at a convenience store, the results of the error in judgment leading to leaving Dahmer's victim with him.

Both cops blame the internal police system for their career woes, yet it's clear that each is too short-sighted, at least most of the way through the show, to see how they have contributed to their own misfortunes. One never does see it, though the other sees it in time to not lose everything he has (little though that may be).

William Mohney's set contributes nicely to the storytelling, with police department desk chairs in the foreground, steps and a wall in the midground, where action can take place, and a mock-up of the Willis Tower in the background, reminding us that whatever we hear, whatever we see, this could only ever be a Chicago story. And if anyone here can stage Chicago for us, put the Windy City on a local stage in a way that we can interpret it, it would be Robin.

It was a wet, steaming summer in Chicago, if the guys are to be believed. And you can feel that rain beating down on the Ellen Groff Studio stage. It's not a pretty play, but a gritty one; it's not morally uplifting and happy, but it's as much a slice of nearly real life as modern theatre sees. You may come out of ninety minutes of this play feeling that you were put through a wringer - but oh, what a wringer to be put through. It's only partly Huff's doing; it's Poulos and Prisco whose talents do the wringing.

If you're willing to be edified rather than merely entertained, A STEADY RAIN is a perfect show to do that. And it shouldn't have to need Hollywood star power to grip you, just two men who can talk to an audience as well as to each other. All you need is to be willing to listen to a story.

At the Fulton through September 27 as part of the Groff Studio Series. It's a shame the run can't be longer. Call 717-397-7245 for tickets and information, or visit www.thefulton.org.

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