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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 single 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. Denny’s toddler is hurt by a flying shard of glass, and even though it sounds as if the glass sliced the child’s face without penetrating bone, there are ominous comments from doctors about possible brain damage. Just what did that shard of glass do? We don’t need a full medical explanation, just a few convincing details. Because as it is, the kid just seems like a plot device to explain Denny’s increasing craziness and desperation. 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 — fights, murder, car accidents, accidental deaths, wounds, a dead hooker, a murderous pimp, wife abuse, gangrene, alcohol and every kind of drug — 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 very much 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 in Spamalot, 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.

Grounded. As Grounded begins, The Pilot is at the top of her game, cocky and tough, exulting in her job of carrying out airstrikes on Iraqi targets, then veering off into the solitary blue freedom of the sky: “I’m long gone by the time the boom happens,” she says. On leave, she whiles away the evenings drinking and playing pool with her “boys.” But like many a warrior before her, The Pilot is undone by love. She gets pregnant, marries, has a little girl, and is grounded by the Air Force and assigned to launch drone attacks from the safety of an air-conditioned trailer in the Nevada desert. For twelve hours a day, she stares at a gray screen, periodically — after long hours of boredom — obliterating human beings judged guilty by her intelligence coordinator with a movement of her thumb. This kind of killing is different from the killing she’s used to, though: There’s a camera in the belly of her Reaper, and she can see the condemned. Every evening, she goes home to her devoted husband and her child. You know from the play’s beginning that The Pilot will eventually fall apart — but you don’t know how this will happen. Author George Brant has written a brilliant script: terse, angry, sad and poetic — not lyrically poetic, but a deep, tough, true poetry, and the central topic is resonant. Anyone who’s been following the news knows about the controversy surrounding the U.S. use of drones — the civilian deaths, the wedding parties bombed, the fact that the administration defines all military-aged males in a strike zone as militants. Seated in a barcalounger, The Pilot metes out death and destruction with absolutely no danger to herself. But there’s nothing polemical about Brant’s script, which is essentially the story of a singular and fascinating woman, a soldier through and through, a hero in the parlance of the day. Laura Norman is brilliant in the central role: She lives every emotionally draining moment, and there’s a profound truth to everything she does, from the heavy, authoritative walk to the jocular militarisms she spouts to her final ominous and despairing words. Going through this experience can’t have been easy for either Norman or director Josh Hartwell, but their creative generosity has achieved something rare in the world of theater: a work with the power to change the viewer. Presented by Boulder Ensemble Theatre Collective through September 28, the Avenue Theater, 417 17th Avenue, 303-321-5925. Reviewed September 18.