TheatreReviewUstinov Studio, BathInspired by the Jeffrey Dahmer case, Mad Men writer Keith Huff's look at two childhood friends turned Chicago cops is meticulously staged – even as it drowns in its own gritty poetry
It's the words that rain down ceaselessly in this two-hander by House of Cards and Mad Men writer Keith Huff. The play is best known for its 2009 incarnation on Broadway, with Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman as the two childhood friends turned 1990s Chicago cops who dreamed of being Starsky and Hutch but found themselves on the wrong side of the law – and each other.
The errors of judgment keep coming during one long summer, when the rain falls in biblical quantities. Huff's play, which consists of alternating monologues often spoken directly to us, places the audience in the position of judge, or possibly God, as we start to find out more about the long relationship and current predicament of these cops.
Huff's narrative was inspired, in part, by the notorious and well-documented corruption of the Chicago police force, and the case of two Milwaukee police officers who, in May 1991, were called to investigate a disturbance involving a Vietnamese teenager who was found in the street naked and in distress. They were persuaded to hand him over to a man who claimed the boy was 19 and his lover. That man was Jeffrey Dahmer, who was subsequently convicted of murdering 17 boys and young men. But this play is, most of all, a tale of friendship, loyalty and betrayal that keeps you guessing about where guilt truly lies to the final line.
It's hard to believe that even Craig and Jackman could have been a match for the quiet, unshowy power of Vincent Riotta and Brian Doherty. Riotta captures the increasing disease beneath the apparently confident but misguided Denny, as he slides down a slippery slope of his own making. Doherty is eminently plausible as the watchful recovering alcoholic, Joey, falling in love with Denny's wife – and out of love with his out-of-control best friend.
This is the kind of muscular, testiculating buddy-bonding and betrayal scenario that would be all too easy to overact, and to invest with a surfeit of swagger and a distracting sheen of sweat. But David Grindley's meticulous production reins everything in. Even the design saves the biblical touches for the final moments, with Paul Wills's set simply offering two chairs in a black box, over which glowers a slab of grey concrete like a sky pressing down. It is so neatly executed that it holds the attention, making it easy to forgive the fact that Huff's verbose script is sometimes in danger of drowning in its own gritty poetry.
Until 10 May. Box office: 01225 448844. Venue: Theatre Royal Bath.
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