“A Steady Rain” Receives 3 1/2 Stars Out of 4!

Wow! Did you see the review for A Steady Rain? Check out this excerpt, and then head on over to http://www.mlive.com to read the rest and check out the wonderful photos of the show by Sally Finneran!

Review: ‘A Steady Rain’ at Actors’ Theatre soaks audience in story of intense brotherhood

By Lorilee Craker | grentertainment@mlive.com
on January 25, 2013 at 10:31 AM

Jim Cantrell, left, as “Joey” and Todd Lewis as “Denny” rehearse “A Steady Rain” Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013 at Spectrum Theatre at Grand Rapids Community College. The play with run Jan. 24- Feb. 2. (Photo credit: Sally Finneran | MLive) THEATER REVIEW: 3 1/2 OUT OF 4 STARS

THEATER REVIEW: 3 1/2 OUT OF 4 STARS
‘A Steady Rain’

Highlight: The parting shot of Denny and Joey, coming to terms with their future.
Low point: Heinous descriptions and word pictures of a serial killer (based on Jeffrey Dahmer) and his unspeakable acts.
Length: 1 hour and 30 minutes, no intermission.
See it: Through Feb. 2 at Spectrum Theater, 160 Fountain St. NE, $20-$24, Spectrum Theater box office, (234-3946), atgr.org.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Deeply flawed and even disturbed, childhood friends Joey (Jim Cantrell) and Denny (Todd Lewis) always have each others’ backs, whether it be in life and domestic issues or on the mean streets of Chicago as cops and partners.

Their friendship, closer than most brothers, is tested to the snapping point in this taut, terrifying hour-and-a-half melodrama that pummels theatergoers with its intensity. Presented by Actors’ Theatre, “A Steady Rain” poured down like acid drops at times on patrons at Thursday’s opening-night performance, a raw deluge of depravity that left no doubt as to mankind’s need for redemption.

Denny is the top dog, a blustery cauldron of justifications and defensiveness. For him, everyone else is the bad guy and he’s to blame for very little. He constantly brags about his “good life,” in a decent house with an attractive wife and two little boys, and generously invites his lonely best friend over almost every night.

Lewis’s Denny is totally full of crap, but one can spot glimmers of his good heart from time to time, saving him from being utterly deplorable. For as the story unfolds, theatergoers learn that Denny isn’t nearly the upstanding family man he presents himself to be and deep down knows he’s not. He’s racist, impulsive, hot tempered and hypocritical — and that’s just for starters.

Joey is easier to like, an alcoholic nebbish who has no life outside of a low-man-on-the-totem-pole beat cop job and a fifth-wheel spot in Denny’s family. Still, he’s moral and reliable, two things the pair become desperately needful of when everything unravels horribly.

A pimp Denny has busted a few times shoots a bullet through his family’s home, injuring his toddler son. Frenzied with revenge, Denny goes on a rampage that further tears his life apart. (…)