Powerful acting drives gripping police drama

Watching Keith Huff's unrelenting "A Steady Rain" is like watching the entire season of "The Shield" condensed into 90 minutes. Forget must-see TV. Director Russ Tutterow's riveting production of Huff's taut, gritty cop drama -- a familiar tale about longtime partners whose friendship is tested when one of them starts to spiral out of control -- is must-see theater. Much of the credit goes to the galvanizing, truthful work by Peter DeFaria and Randy Steinmeyer, whose stormy, husky, brawling performances as a pair of flawed, conflicted cops are the acting equivalent to Carl Sandburg's "Chicago." Their performances are so genuine, their relationship so natural, you'd think they've been patrolling a beat together for years. A side note: If Chicago Dramatists extends or remounts the show, Tutterow might consider having DeFaria and Steinmeyer alternate roles the way the way Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly did during the Broadway run of Sam Shepard's "True West" in 2000. I have no doubt this talented duo have the acting chops to pull it off. Everything about this complicated tale of friendship, envy, betrayal and duty feels authentic -- from Huff's spot-on South Side, CPD patois to DeFaria's sensitive Joey, a recovering alcoholic trying to conform to the department's PC protocol and Steinmeyer's ferocious Denny, an old-school cop adrift, whose behavior "on the job" threatens his family. Add to that Tom Burch's drab interrogation room with its grimy windows, dull walls and scuffed linoleum; Jeff Pines' subtly shifting lighting and Mike Tutaj's urban soundscape and you have the makings of a Chicago classic.Huff, a Chicago Dramatists resident playwright, mines familiar ground in his self-described duologue in which Joey and Denny recount for the department's internal affairs division the events surrounding a botched domestic disturbance call that resulted in the death of a teenage boy. (The retelling of which elicited an audible gasp from Sunday's audience, whose members undoubtedly recalled the grisly, true-life event that inspired it). Moreover, while it has the passion and toughness of "The Shield," "A Steady Rain" lacks the nuance of a show like "The Wire." And the disastrous series of events that befall Joey and Denny, all of which happen in rather quick succession, strain credulity. But those are minor concerns in what is a thoroughly engrossing examination of the toll the job takes on those sworn to serve and protect, and how amorphous the line between criminal and cop can be. "A Steady Rain" 3 1/2 starts out of fourLocation: Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Ave., Chicago Times: 8 p.m. Thursdays to Saturdays; 3 p.m. Sundays through Oct. 29 Running Time: About 90 minutes, no intermissionTickets: $22, $28Parking: On the streetBox office: (312) 633-0630 or www.chicagodramatists.orgRating: For adults