A Steady Rain

Storytelling on stage can take many forms. Sometimes we get ‘the full picture’, in chronological order, from all characters involved. Sometimes we get the individual perspective of a narrator - possibly an unreliable one. In the case of A Steady Rain, we have Nick Fagan (as Denny) and Rohan Watts (as Joey) comprising the entirety of the cast, sometimes interacting directly with each other, more often speaking in monologue to the audience, painting a vivid portrait of the seediness and moral corruption that police work can entail.

With little in the way of props and even less of scenery, this is an actor-driven, character-based text. It is also a formidably challenging experience when one of the two characters presents himself as somebody whom you would cross the street to avoid; a person you wouldn’t want to be, and wouldn’t want to know. It is a struggle to locate in this play a truly valid reason as to why we should care about these particular people and the part of the world they inhabit. How should we react to a storyteller whose manner is consistently and persistently off-putting? Why should we sit and listen attentively to their story for close to ninety minutes?

To be sure, Fagan is dedicated to presenting this man as he is, and as he remains, virtually from start to finish, but if you saw the performer’s wondrous work in When the Rain Stops Falling, where he inhabited a character with rich dimensions while generating genuine intrigue, the monotony of Denny will be especially frustrating to endure. At roughly the one-hour mark, A Steady Rain seems to be reaching to position Denny as a man whose conscience has been awoken, but it seemed to this reviewer like just one more bout of self-important bluster from an insufferable personality.

On the rare occasions when Denny recedes and Joey steps gingerly into the light, Watts manages to bring a welcome sense of variety to the piece. “We both needed to be inside something other than our own skin that night” is the most affecting line in the play, and Watts’ understatement serves the moment well. His character’s white shirt, though obvious, works well enough as a visual symbol of the ‘good-cop/bad-cop’ division at work here. Scott Cleggett’s lighting design is comprised mostly of occasional blackouts that feel more like random commercial breaks than dramatically useful effects.

Black is the dominant shade here, visually and emotionally. Keith Huff’s writing is peppered with sordid details, but little in the way of illumination or revelation. A sense of poisoned comedy almost breaks through occasionally, promising to add a welcome additional dimension, but the title of this show is, in the end, all too apt.

Anthony Vawser