A Steady Rain – Cathode Ray Tube

Overview

Shows like The Wire, and even the less probing Law and Orders, have gotten us well acquainted with the idea that the fates of police officers' are deeply intertwined with the crims they spend their lives chasing. That theme and style are continued on the stage in A Steady Rain, the gripping work from playwright Keith Huff, which is set in one of the USA's signature moral battlegrounds, Chicago.

Presented by original indie theatre purveyors Cathode Ray Tube (The Great Lie of the Western World), the play packages these themes for the literarily minded. It has quite an unusual structure that makes for a primal, personal mode of storytelling as its two characters, cops Denny (Michael Booth) and Joey (Sam O'Sullivan), give separate monologues that intersect, collide, and are anything but static. Their story begins with an unexceptional family dinner, to which Denny has invited his bachelor best bud and the sex worker out of whom he hopes Joey will make an honest woman. His choices that night set in motion a chain of events that erodes their friendship and risks everything Denny holds dear.

The pair are old-school cops — loyal, tribal, chauvinistic, racist. Regularly offensive in that way that makes onlookers laugh awkwardly. The fact that they've been repeatedly passed over for promotion to detective is no doubt for these worrying traits, and it's this exclusion that is forming a chasm between the two now. It has made Joey determined to reform and succeed, and it's made Denny act out, become embittered, and start following his own code.

This is really an actors' play, an unflinching character study that asks a lot from the two men almost constantly on stage. So it's a good thing the acting is so good. Booth is one of a kind, a magnet for our attention with minutely observed mannerisms that seem to come automatically and an intensity that burns from the inside out. His is an extreme kind of naturalism, which will come as a relief to anyone normally turned off by theatrey delivery. Underplaying is a virtue here. O'Sullivan, who was already disturbingly excellent in ATYP's Punk Rock earlier this year, is only on an upswing. Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig played these roles on Broadway, but you only think about this fact when walking into the TAP Gallery theatre, not when walking out.

The performances are supported by equally subtle staging. Lights hanging overhead appropriately recall an interrogation, while the sound (by Brendan Woife) rises above white noise only to prod our anxiety with quivering violins. Denny's Timberlands and ragged Chicago Bears T-shirt speak volumes. Only the intermission is intrusive, pulling us out of a relentless story that could probably have run its 95 minutes right through from beginning to end.

Cathode Ray Tube usually put on newly written works that are vividly their own, the last being in April. Those kinds of productions take a long time to gestate, so interesting imports like A Steady Rain will keep the team fondly in our thoughts in the meantime.

Read Cathode Ray Tube's Hidden Sydney profile here.