A Steady Rain. A Steady Rain
tells the striking story of a rogue cop. Denny is not above petty infractions; he has his scams; he's on the take from prostitutes. Yet in his own sick way, he's committed to logic and the motto to "protect and serve." At the play's beginning, his transgressions seem minor and his intentions benevolent. His partner, Joey, has been a pal since boyhood, though Denny was always the bullying dominant of the two. Denny likes having Joey over for dinner; he wants to show his friend the pleasures of a home-cooked meal and a settled married life. While author Keith Huff's play has drive and force, it is also full of problems: turns of plot you can't quite swallow, minor and major inconsistencies. Sometimes you get the sense of an author throwing in everything he can get his hands on just to keep things rolling forward fast and hard, and no sooner have Denny and Joey absorbed one devastating plot twist than they're racing full tilt toward the next. Ultimately, what you're watching is melodrama — albeit skillful and intelligent melodrama. That the production ends up working as well as it does is due to director Terry Dodd and his two actors, all three of whom explore the material with depth and integrity. Presented by Edge Theatre Company through September 28, 1560 Teller Street, Lakewood, 303-232-0363, theedgetheatre.com. Reviewed September 11. All the Rage. All the Rage is a sequel to Martin Moran's first one-man play, The Tricky Part, which told the story of his molestation by a counselor at Colorado's Camp St. Malo when he was twelve — a relationship that continued over three conflicted years. Questions about Moran's apparent lack of anger sparked this new work, an exploration of anger and forgiveness. While Moran continues his own soul-searching here, he also opens the windows to a more universal perspective. He tells us about his father's second wife, a hateful, homophobic woman. When she makes some particularly wrenching remarks after his father's funeral, he suddenly finds his own arm raised for a blow. And then the arm descends and, in an astonishing and inexpressible moment, his hand rests gently over hers. When Moran finds himself at the age of fifty galloping around a Broadway stage on an invisible horse and clopping coconut halves together as Sir Robin inSpamalot
, he wonders what his life adds up to. He wants to be good. He looks for models. He ponders the words of philosophers and saints. Eventually, he starts working as a translator for a center that aids torture victims. Here he encounters Siba, a refugee from Chad, who had been abducted and tortured by rebel soldiers. Moran is moved and sobered by his growing understanding of this man's life, by Siba's grief, flashes of humor and forbearance. He bears no malice toward the soldiers who took him, Siba explains; they were uneducated men who had no idea what they were doing. While it seems discursive, All the Rage is eloquently written and thoughtfully structured. And the play goes beyond incident and anecdote. It takes us to the Sterkfontein cave in South Africa, known as the cradle of humankind, where Moran learns of the legend of Pangaea, a time when all the continents of the world fit together in a single land mass. Spooning, as Moran says. The idea that on some level we are all one is simplistic, and Moran doesn't insult our intelligence by articulating it — but he does evoke the compassion and capacity for forgiveness in all of us, our yearning for wholeness, the sudden, inexplicable joy we sometimes feel at a significant encounter with a stranger, or when we understand something new about someone we thought we knew through and through. Presented by Curious Theatre Company, 1080 Acoma Street, through October 5; The Tricky Part will reprise for four performances. Call 303-623-0524 or go to curioustheatre.org. Reviewed September 18.Naughty Bits. Naughty Bits
tells three related stories, all circling the figure of the famous Landsdowne Hercules — a Roman statue of the mythic hero holding a club and the skin of the Nemean Lion he killed as his first great labor. The statue was restored in the eighteenth century — except for its broken-off penis. In one of the three stories, set in the 1920s, an inconceivably wealthy fellow called Harry conducts an extended flirtation with his witty and seductive mistress, Jenny. She's teasingly scornful of the Hercules statue — which he's purchased — and all the other great artworks on his English estate, also recently purchased. Then there's the 1950s Art Historian, crazily passionate about his work, fumbling with his slides and projector as he expatiates on the wonders of the statue to us, the audience. The contemporary Romance Novelist, meanwhile, having done some research into the Landsdowne Hercules, is pitching a book proposal to her editor. She wants to put the statue in the home of one Lady Louisa, who will fall in love with it, missing genitalia and all. The three segments may be separate, with each protagonist in his or her own reality, but they come together more and more over the course of the evening, until the ideas meld together to form a kind of whole, a meditation on love, sex, art, history, power, money and gender that ends with a fleshy (sort of), outrageous and snortingly funny climax. Naughty Bitsillustrates the way a work of art travels through time, changing both physically and in the way it's interpreted. This Hercules is a paradox — a hero, a love god, the epitome of male beauty — but lacking the essential male appendage. So he represents — at least to the Novelist — both male and female or neither, a kind of coming together in peace and mutual understanding. But the play is anything but dense or polemical. It's a dazzling, skilfully structured, swift-moving and original comedy, filled with insane imaginings, daring bits and hilarious bons mots. And when those deeper currents surface, they sparkle and shine, too. Presented by Buntport Theatre Company October 4, 717 Lipan Street, 720-946-1388, www.buntport.com. Reviewed September 25.
