Los Angeles Times - Recommended
"...In keeping with that heightened tone, director Jeff Perry encourages his actors to play just this side of caricature in performances well-balanced between Viscuso's testosterone-fueled machismo and Kelly's deceptive softness – attributes that make the ultimate power-shift between them all the more compelling."
Broadway World - Recommended
..Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents the Los Angeles premiere of A STEADY RAIN, the Broadway smash hit by Keith Huff, directed by Steppenwolf Theatre co-founder Jeff Perry with a clear understanding of the love and pain embodied in real friendship."
The Hollywood Reporter - Recommended
"...Nevertheless, it is best not to oversell the qualities or virtues of A Steady Rain, which partakes of television territory with a moral subtlety that eschews moralizing, and though its particular darkness can teeter on the generic, it makes a walloping impact within its own carefully delimited terms."
Stage Scene LA - Recommended
"...Two superb actors stand in for the proverbial "cast of thousands" to make for as thrillingly visual a ninety minutes of edge-of-your-seat theater as you'd get in any big-screen blockbuster, as the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents the Los Angeles Premiere of Keith Huff's A Steady Rain under Jeff Perry's electric direction."
The Tolucan Times - Recommended
"...In the Odyssey Theater's latest production of Huff's award-winning play, both Thomas Vincent Kelly and Sal Viscuso get that grating Chicagoan loyalty down to a heartbreaking reality in this dynamic, cop-buddy play gone all kinds of wrong."
BlogCritics.org - Recommended
"...The Odyssey has done a terrific job with this production. Adam Flemming's set, consisting simply of two chairs and three screens upon which evocative images are projected, places the focus on the intensity of the subject matter. It's expertly directed by Steppenwolf Theatre Company co-founder Jeff Perry, and kudos must also go to the imaginative lighting by Michael Gend and sound by John Zalewski, which incorporates the titular rain and contributes to the sense of unease."
ArtsBeatLA - Recommended
"...While the tale unfolds with a somewhat predictable tragic trajectory, the journey we are taken on is not always predictable and frequently gripping. What stands out beyond the recognizable tale is the crisp, authentic and occasionally poetic dialogue and two extremely fine performances from these two leading men."
ArtsInLA - Recommended
"...With Perry's direction here at its best, the actors, sharply focused and painting in small strokes, create a world the audience can clearly feel. And what a relief it is when the actors take their bows and we can leave that dangerous, brother-against-brother, world behind and get in out of the rain."
Frontiers - Recommended
"...Huff's intimate two-hander alternates piercing monologues with gripping scenes between two characters headed for inevitable calamity. Viscuso and Kelly offer bravura performances, and the design elements are first-rate. Perry's staging is resonant and powerful."
Total Theater - Recommended
"...Huff's pressure-cooker dialogue, which is shot through with street-lingo and profanity, keeps up its intensity from beginning to end. The playwright's storytelling skills are equally impressive: he knows how to hold the audience on the edge of its seat for 95 straight minutes."
Working Authur - Recommended
"...With Beth Hogan producing, "A Steady Rain" stands as a prime example of what the Odyssey does best: offering L.A. theatregoers exceptional staging of works singular and unique."
LifeInLA - Recommended
"...In a theater with no more than 100 seats, a minimalist set and a two-person cast dazzle. You'll find yourself drawn to actors who feel more like people you know than men racking up stage credits for their resumes. You'll be so captivated by their story it won't matter that the events they're retelling-scratch that, reliving-spill stream of consciousness out of chronological order. It won't matter that sometimes the men are talking to each other, that sometimes they're talking to the audience or that sometimes they're recounting their actions and memories for nonexistent cops in one of the very questioning rooms they've likely used on their own perps. Because this is A Steady Rain, a phenomenal play directed by Jeff Perry that needs no bells or whistles to moisten the eyes of even the most discerning theatergoers-and it's about damn time that this city's theater scene returns to its roots and lets a simple script and two actors strut their talent."
The Los Angeles Post - Recommended
"...This is enthralling and will stick with you long after you leave the theater, like all good theater should."
Gia on the Move - Recommended
"...Audiences however, will not be deep diving, will be completely mesmerized by this tragic story and will come away with their own set of moral questions, as they should. A Steady Rain is a fine example of thoroughly well-written and well-executed stage production. Viscuso and Kelly are otherwise brilliant."
Plawriting in the City - Recommended
"...The play itself defies time and place, existing in a malleable space – brought to life in the Odyssey Theatre by Scenic and Projection Designer Adam Flemming – that shifts to fit the retelling of the lives of these two men."
Cynthia Citron - Recommended
"...It's an intense play, even though it consists of only two men talking to each other. Under Jeff Perry's deft direction the two manage to fill up the stage with consistently provocative exchanges and character revelations that leave you wondering who's the good cop and who's the bad."
