STAGE REVIEW : ‘Willie & Esther’ Returns With Tough Act to Follow

Willie and his woman, Esther, are standing outside an automatic teller at Vermont and Manchester in South-Central Los Angeles. Willie wants to rob the bank. Esther, leaning on a U.S. postal box, plays along. She knows that Willie is all jive, but she loves him.

Two actors, two props. Theater, comedy in this case, can’t get more basic than this.

“Willie & Esther,” at Theatre of Arts, is riotous, seamless, even daring because it pulls out all the emotional stops and triumphs on its own terms.

The actors, the befuddled, wiry Hugh Dane and the wide-eyed, smart-mouthed Edwina Moore, are so right for their roles it’s like watching a couple recorded on “Candid Camera.” The pair originated the roles three years ago in a one-act at the Inner City Cultural Center with the current director, Diann McCannon. Playwright James Graham Bronson has expanded the play to two acts in this boisterous rebirth, under the savvy producer reins of Stanley Bennett Clay.

This is a case of all the creative parties, including sound designer Gregory Eugene Travis, coming together in a production that doesn’t have a false note in it. This show is not a diamond in the rough. It’s a diamond, period.

Playwright Bronson has the kind of ear for one-liners that, as sassy as they are, don’t seem brittle and show-offy. When Willie tells Esther that “robbin’ is as American as baseball” or when Esther self-confidently counters that “you hit the bank when you met me,” these lines come out of character.

Willie’s produce worker and Esther’s beautician are not costumed for Skid Row. These characters dress with some panache (although I preferred Willie’s aloha shirt from the Inner City Cultural Center production). Dane is a tintype of a street-corner dreamer. And Moore is sensational, at turns cynical, hands-on-hips aggressive, glaring, vulnerable, her heart pumping on her sleeve. This is the kind of performance that makes a career.

Watching these actors, in fact, is not unlike the memory of catching Jackie Gleason and Jayne Meadows on “The Honeymooners” for the first time. They are that good and that timeless.

Esther and Willie say peoples instead of people, and Esther laments that she has “roses of the liver.” But she knows the score in a way Willie never will. As she puts it without any complaint: “We’re criminals, Willie. We’re black-collar people.”

At 4128 Wilshire Blvd., Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m. ; Sundays, 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. ; through Jan. 20. $15-$20. (213) 732-3602.