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Arts & Entertainment

Glencoe Debuts Broadway Playwright's Latest

Chicago writer delivers drama and intensity in 'The Detective's Wife' at the Writers' Theatre.

Mild mannered and unassuming, Keith Huff takes a seat at Glencoe Roast Coffee in advance of a Saturday evening rehearsal for The Detective’s Wife. The show is the accomplished playwright’s latest and much-anticipated production that debuted on the Writers’ Theatre stage May 24.

For Huff, the journey from veteran medical editor to celebrated Broadway scribe has been an unlikely one.

“This is not something I ever could have predicted,” Huff said with a shake of his head.

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Writing plays for the better part of three decades, Huff hit the big time in 2009 with A Steady Rain, his tension-filled drama about a set of Chicago police partners. It became a show that charged onto Broadway with Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman in tow.

Now, Huff is on the North Shore with a follow-up, high expectations and the confidence to match. The Detective’s Wife, the second in Huff’s loose trilogy of Chicago cop plays, stars veteran Chicago stage actress Barbara Robertson.

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(The trilogy’s final installment, Tell us of the Night, has been selected for development at the 2011 O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference.)

Robertson plays retail store owner Alice Conroy, a mother of two grown children and wife of a homicide detective. After her husband is gunned down on the job, Conroy sets out to find the gunman and his motivations in the stage production directed by Gary Griffin.

Born in Arlington Heights, raised in Wisconsin, but a Chicago resident since his college years, Huff peers into the Chicago police world well aware of what he might see. The playwright married into a Chicago police family, with both his father-in-law and brother-in-law exposing him to the urban policing landscape--its confrontations and challenges as much as its triumphs and tragedies.

“I heard a lot of stories from those men and my writing took that on,” Huff said. “Each of the plays [in the trilogy], deals with a certain level of corruption and compromise not just because they’re cops, but because they’re human beings.”

Nearly two years after its Broadway debut, A Steady Rain continues surging, appearing on stages in Mexico City, Barcelona, Paris and Budapest, Hungary, while Huff has secured a handsome deal to write the screenplay for Barbara Broccoli at EON Films. Now, Huff says, it’s The Detective’s Wife's turn.

Despite the similar subject matter, Huff assures audiences that The Detective’s Wife is not A Steady Rain rerun. The Writers’ Theatre production differs in tone and voice, embracing the murder mystery genre.

“I knew after I finished writing A Steady Rain that I could never write that play again,” Huff said. “The Detective’s Wife is its own creation.”

A product of Chicago’s storefront theaters, Huff embraces “small plays.” A Steady Rain was a two-man show; the Writers’ Theatre’s staging of The Detective’s Wife features only Robertson. Huff, meanwhile, calls the Writers’ Theatre’s Books on Vernon space, a 50-seat venue tucked in the rear of the bookstore, the perfect setting for his newest work.

“With the intimacy of small theaters, you can take advantage of the primacy of storytelling and that’s what we’ll do with The Detective’s Wife,” said Huff, who recently completed a stint as a writer and co-producer for AMC's Emmy and Golden Globe Award-winning series Mad Men.

Huff handpicked Robertson, whom he worked with at Steppenwolf’s production of Pursued by Happiness, confident that the actress’ range, authenticity and truth would enliven the script. In preparation for the role, Robertson met with cold-case detectives from the Chicago Police Department, seeking to access their world and its compelling, unique dynamic.

“The police world can be a dizzying one to penetrate, but I think that will be an informative aspect to The Detective’s Wife,” said Huff.

The Detective’s Wife runs at the Writers’ Theatre in Glencoe through July 31. Curtain times are Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m; Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.; and Sundays at 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Tickets are $50-$60 and are available at the Writers’ Theatre box office, 376 Park Ave. in Glencoe, by calling 847-242-6000 or online at www.writerstheatre.org.

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