STAGE REVIEW : ‘Criminal Minds’ Follows Comic Cons on the Run

The scene is a deserted miniature golf course in Palm City Beach, Fla., in the middle of winter. A threesome on the run from the cops have staked it out.

Eddie Ray is a parolee with big dreams of the perfect crime. His girlfriend, Billy Marie, who was involved in the porno operation that got him his time, is along for a ride she’s not sure she wants to take. Eddie Ray’s ace in the hole is the convict he helped escape--Renfroe, who was serving a 40-year stretch for a crime he can’t remember.

Robin Swicord’s “Criminal Minds” is billed as a comedy, and there certainly are laughs in it, but its simplicity is deceiving. At Third Stage, under Allison Liddi’s rich, multilayered direction, it has a lot to say about male chauvinism, a woman’s right to make her own choices, simple romance and, yes, the criminal mind.

Renfroe, played with delicious naivete and an easy comic rhythm by James Henriksen, can’t remember what happened two minutes ago, much less what his crime was. As Billy Marie says about Renfroe’s constant renewed attraction to her, “It’s just love at first sight . . . over and over and. . . .” Mark Hawkins’ well-shaped Eddie Ray is volatile, rough-edged and ignorant of what’s happening around him. He is just as naive as Renfroe as he gives him a jury-rigged “aptitude test” to find out what his crime, his “talent,” is. He’s not happy when he finds out.

Much of the insight into the core of Swicord’s play is in the charming performance of Bonita Friedericy. She understands Billy Marie’s uncomplicated plea for normalcy and independence and her dream of a gentle love, and she can turn a comic moment into a gem of character revelation.

Liddi knows the layout of this course and how to play it. The only thing that keeps “Criminal Minds” from being a hole in one is the script’s primary colors. The shadings are all provided by the director and the cast, from its gentle moments of tenderness between Billy Marie and Renfroe, to the shock of Renfroe finally remembering his “talent” in the play’s last violent moment.

“Criminal Minds,” Third Stage, 2811 W. Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. Fridays-Saturdays, 8 p.m. Indefinitely. $10; (818) 842-4755. Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes.