Interview: Jeffrey Donovan and Jonathan Tucker bring A STEADY RAIN to Boston

Seventeen years after its high-profile, record-breaking Broadway run, playwright Keith Huff’s taut crime drama “A Steady Rain” will finally land in Boston for two performances only, September 17–18, at Boston Lyric Opera’s Community Studios.

The script-in-hand staging will star television and film actors Jeffrey Donovan (TV: “Law & Order,” “Burn Notice;” films: “J. Edgar,” “LBJ”) and Jonathan Tucker (TV: Harlan Coben’s “I Will Find You,” “Kingdom,” “Westworld;” films: “The Virgin Suicides,” “Charlie’s Angels”) and is being directed by Steven Maler, founding artistic director of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, whose company Royal Nonesuch is producing “A Steady Rain” in Boston.

In addition to Shakespeare on the Common, Maler is also known for his past direction of “American Voices,” a series of one-night play readings at Boston’s Shubert Theatre which featured Paul Rudd, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Blair Brown, Brooke Adams, Tony Shalhoub, Leslie Uggams, Denis O’Hare, Charles Busch, and others.

With a plot based on a real-life event involving cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and set on the hardscrabble streets of Chicago, the two-hander is the story of Joey and Denny, lifelong friends and police partners whose loyalty to one another is put to the test when a routine call takes a dark turn. As the consequences of their decisions close in on the police officers, friendship, duty, violence, and complicity collide and the instinct to protect someone they love looks like it may ultimately destroy them both. 

An Amesbury native, Donovan graduated from UMass Amherst with a Bachelor of Arts in drama and earned his Master of Fine Arts from New York University’s Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. Born and brought up in Charlestown, Tucker attended the Park School in Brookline and the Boston Ballet School, playing Fritz in the company’s annual production of “The Nutcracker” for five seasons beginning when he was in the third grade. Tucker also attended the Thacher School in Ojai, California.

The actors, who first met 30 years ago on a film set, both have experience portraying law enforcement officers. Tucker is currently playing Boston police sergeant Adam Mackenzie in the Netflix miniseries “I Will Find You,” and Donovan was NYPD detective sergeant Frank Cosgrove on seasons 21 and 22 of NBC-TV’s “Law & Order.”

Donovan and Tucker were in Medford recently when they took time for a joint Zoom call to discuss “A Steady Rain” and more.

What drew you to this project?

Jeffrey Donovan: I had done a Shakespeare on the Common production of “Hamlet,” which Steve Maler directed, in 2005, and since then Steve and I have stayed in touch. We’re always trying to find something to do together that will fit into my schedule and his. Over the years, we mostly just talked about things we could do but, more recently, we started reading a bunch of plays including a lot of Pinter and Beckett, and began finding things that maybe people aren’t doing often.

One day, Steve said to me, “What if we get Jonathan Tucker involved in what we’re trying to do?” I immediately thought that was a great idea. Knowing Tucker was from Massachusetts and that he not only had a relationship with Boston but also Steve knew him made it all seem like a perfect fit. And it’s a dream come true to be able to share the stage with Jonathan, who suggested we do “A Steady Rain,” in front of a Boston audience.

Jonathan Tucker: I was interested from the moment I got a call from Jeffrey. I was thrilled really. We had done the Barry Levinson movie “Sleepers,” with Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon, Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman, together almost 30 years ago now, and I’ve been following Jeffrey’s career ever since. I’m a huge fan of his work.

And I have been trying on my own side to do theater and I’ve been really proactive about that. So when I got this call, I was like, “Oh my gosh!” The opportunity to work with Jeffrey and with Steve, and to come back home to Boston to workshop something and see how it sounds, was one that got me super excited right from the jump. And then we set out to choose something that was fresh because finding a great two-hander is tough. When I suggested “A Steady Rain,” which opened on Broadway when I was 17, we read it and felt like it could potentially be the right thing for us to do.

Have you worked together over the years or just that first time?

JD: Just that first time. I mean, Jonathan was very young when we did that picture. It was 30 years ago.

JT: “Sleepers” was such a seminal project for me that I kind of kept tabs on that cast, because they felt a bit like a theater company where everybody’s rooting for each other. Watching Jeffrey’s work since then has been like, “God, this is a real visceral, authentic actor.” And I didn’t even appreciate until recently that he is also from Massachusetts.

What’s it like for each of you to be working with another Bostonian?

JD: I’m from Amesbury which probably makes me more of a Massachusetts than a Boston man. Jonathan is very specifically Boston.

JT: That’s right. I’m from Charlestown and my father taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for 35 years. I’m in love with Boston and my neighborhood in Charlestown so I’ll happily take ownership of any part of my history with both.

Let’s talk about the two characters. We’ll start with you, Jonathan – tell me about Joey?

JT: Joey and Denny are two kind of unreliable narrators, which is part of what makes the story fun. They are best friends and two police officers telling their sides of the same story. Joey is an alcoholic, or maybe a recovering alcoholic, who is in love with his best friend’s wife. And Joey is probably trying harder to better himself than his friend Denny is, which is revealed in a variety of ways over the course of the story.

I’m drawn to the way they rib each other, the way they can get dark together and find humor in those dark places, and the way they care for each other like family and blood, even though they’re not. Their understanding of what community really is and their feeling that they’re being left behind by society, and even by the police department itself, are themes that I’m very comfortable with.

And Jeffrey, tell me about Denny?

JD: He’s a complicated man. One of the themes in the play that is especially important for me is how much he feels like he’s dedicating his whole life to his family, to his wife and kids. But his wife may not be dedicating her whole life to him and the great tragedy of this play, especially for Denny, is how unaware he is of what’s really going on around him. He has all the passion and courage to say, “I want to take care of my friends and I want to take care of my family,” but what he’s really doing is destroying them and himself at the same time. He’s unaware of it, however, and that’s the tragedy of who Denny is.

What can audiences expect from this production?

JD: We’ll have scripts in hand, but under Steve’s direction, we’re going to flesh it out. We’ll have two tables and two chairs – not unlike an interview room in a police station. And you’re going to see the two of us kind of exploring the text physically as well. We won’t be off book, but our faces won’t be buried in the script. What’s interesting about the play is that you catch Denny and Joey at home, then on the streets, then in their squad car, and then back at home. We want the play to rise above the stage in the audience’s imagination, rather than us being literal about it.

JT: In the original staging of the play, when they’ve done it in past productions, the setting has usually been minimal, just a table. And I think in the Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman version, they were not in uniform. They were wearing street clothes like we will.

What do you envision for the future of this endeavor?

JT: I want people to come see the show and then I want us to be able to put this up as a fully staged, proper Boston production. Our audiences now will be able to say that they were invited into this process and got to watch it from the initial script-in-hand production all the way through. I mean, that is the hope for the next evolution of this. We want this to go great and attract some attention so that we can find some people that would want to get behind it and we can do it here in Boston.

(Note: “A Steady Rain” is an intense, adult drama containing strong/coarse language, with references to violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, substance abuse, trauma, death, and self-harm. The play also explores difficult themes including police corruption, child endangerment, grief, and moral compromise. It is recommended for mature audiences.)