Steady Rain, A

All elements combine at GableStage in South Florida to make the two-character cop drama, A Steady Rain, come off as significantly more than the sum of its storyline parts.

Early on, the play threatens to be a series of street stories and childhood reminiscences. Before its end (a scant hour and a quarter later), it perhaps approaches melodrama even as it delivers the believable horror of unintended consequences and innocent victims. The production, directed by Joseph Adler, packs a punch, thanks to powerful performances and atmospheric tech – a shades-of-gray skyline background by Lyle Baskin with erector-set like bridgework framing the front, lighting by Jeff Quinn, foreboding music by Matt Corey and costumes by Ellis Tillman.

Dressed in jeans and slouchy black leather jackets, the reliably persuasive actors Todd Allen Durkin (as never-married Joey) and Gregg Weiner (married-with-baby Denny) assume the position of men who are weighed down.

This is the Keith Huff play probably best known for having Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman as Joey and Denny in its Broadway debut in 2009. Huff is a playwright associated with Chicago Dramatists; he also did a stint as a writer for AMC’s “Mad Men” series.

A Steady Rain has Joey and Denny, Chicago beat cops who several times have been denied promotion, address the audience as well as act out some of the incidents recalled as a particularly rainy stretch in the city. Foul-mouthed Denny takes shortcuts and payoffs on the job, but he’s helped Joey stop drinking. Soon enough, though, Denny makes a decision (he defends his motives) whose consequences click in with rapid succession in this taut production.