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Sure enough, a cell phone rang. The most anticipated star power Broadway combo of the year, Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman in A Steady Rain, at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, came with the biggest star story of the year: both actors stopping the show to tell audience members to turn off ringing cell phones.

The brouhaha matched the excitement: Ushers beaming flashlights into perpetrators’ eyes right before curtain created as much chatter as the anticipation of seeing James Bond and Wolverine entertain us live and - alas - fully clothed. (Yes, that’s a warning for anyone hoping to get a peek at the guys take it off on Broadway.)

Luckily, neither actor heard the perp phone. Luckier still, Craig and Jackman are Hollywood stars skilled enough to handle the technique of stage acting, and the even more challenging aspect of a talky, two-character play that barely gives them time to breathe. Keith Huff’s new work is a clever, smart play that twists and contorts plots and moves from past to present, from acting to the audience to acting with each other, and from story-telling to real-time. At times, the 90-minute, intermission-less play seems less of a show and more of a table-reading for Hollywood’s newest crime/buddy drama -- I’m thinking Sean Penn and Robert Downey Jr. in the lead roles.

That’s not to say that Craig and Jackman aren’t good -- they’re pros -- but such a setting immediately casts the audience as star judges, just as Scott Pask’s bare set works as an Existential judge over the two best friends, cop partners, and indigenous Chicagoans. Denny (Jackman), we soon discover, is the family man, with a wife and children and big-screen TV (an opening Nielson Family bit is a humorous highlight). Craig’s Joey is the loner: no wife, no girlfriend, lots of booze.

What starts out as witty commentary between the friends, who pour on their Chicago accents like, well, steady rain, turns ugly and deadly. Denny’s family has been shot at, Joey’s in love with his best friend’s wife, both guys screw up on the force, and revenge kills -- literally. You might have trouble following some of the plotlines, but these guys make sure you hear every line.

Jackman’s the more centered of the two performers, if ever-so-slightly miscast. His hard-ass cop antics sometimes contradict his flourishing stage presence; I never quite believed he’d beat his kids or, more so, beat up Craig, who tells us straight off that Jackman’s the better fighter.

Director Keith Huff keeps the pacing tight and leveled. There are a few moments where the actors seem to be wandering around the stage in search of blocking, and a dream director would have dug out more contrasts between the two men. The periodic backdrops by Pask are sumptuous, although one can’t quite shake the feeling that they’re being used to prevent the audience from getting bored.

The biggest problem with the play is the trap of too much fourth-wall-breaking. Since the characters’ monologues are directed at the audience, A Steady Rain at times resembles the worst parts of Jane Fonda’s star vehicle, 33 Variations, and, worse still, Vanessa Redgrave’s star vehicle, the glorified book reading of The Year of Magical Thinking.

As for the audience, I don’t remember a recent show that received such wonderful reactions during and afterward, some people daring to rip into Ben Brantley’s not-so-kind New York Times review. A Steady Rain is, to its credit, an extreme crowd pleaser, if not a great play. In fact, it might be the most exciting film of the fall season. Call a friend.

A Steady Rain runs through December 6, 2009 at the Schoenfeld Theatre, 236 West 45th Street, New York, NY. For more information visit the show’s website.