One-Act’s Images Give Audience ‘Noir’ Fix

Taut, nervous and over almost before it seems to have begun, David Higgins’ one-act drama “Partners” is the perfect fix for those anxiously awaiting the next novel by Elmore Leonard or film by Leonard’s cinematic champion Quentin Tarantino.

Playwright Higgins is just as inspired by Leonard, and also a bit by noir’s toughest guy, Jim Thompson. The difference is that Higgins’ underground men are young; they could be Thompson’s gun-toting, drug-dealing grandchildren. The classically fatal connections among crime, loyalty, betrayal and survival instincts remain the same.

Director Anthony Alexandre opens the play, at the Eclectic Theatre Company, with an ideal film noir image: a guy cooped up in an old hotel bed throwing darts at the wall, a neon sign blinking outside his window. Alexandre also plays the guy, named Troy, and we don’t know what to make of him for a long time. He’s angrily intense, yet self-controlled. His idea of a meal is a cup of yogurt mixed with some whiskey. He plunges a dart into his ankle--he has a wooden leg. He’s a one-legged killer.

He’s bad--but not as bad as the guys who are after him. Troy has conned his boss Patsy out of drug money and knows Patsy’s men are out to get him. The problem is that Patsy’s men--the take-charge Al (Tony Kravet) and tag-along, obeisant Pete (Steve Rozic)--were once Troy’s partners. So when Al says he wants to whisk Troy away before Patsy’s men arrive, is he sincere or feeding Troy a pre-execution line?

What sends this into a head-to-head--and heady--conflict is that Troy doesn’t seem to care that Patsy is on the way. This sets off Al, and the two go at it for most of the play. Al is slickly dressed, professional, a guy being groomed for the top. Troy is the Leonard-esque marginal hero, inventing his own rules, shirtless and in jeans.

Troy further tempts fate when he insults a strip club manager over the phone, which brings the manager (John Schmidt) up to pummel Troy into submission. Again, Troy doesn’t care. But Higgins makes sure that we never quite figure this guy out. Neither do his former partners, who get the last surprise.

The finale is supposed to be more Grand Guignol than it ends up being here, and besides, it’s more of a movie ending than a play ending. (Of course, we can’t reveal it here.) In retrospect, long after the play’s over, the ending is also kind of an illogical cheat. Even fate-tempting Troy wouldn’t hold back his ace card so long.

Alexandre has his own partners in Kravet and Rozic, who make up three points on a behavioral triangle. Kravet plays Al as a cool control freak, who really doesn’t know what to do when he’s lost control. Rozic effectively blends into the carpet as the backup guy, but always on the job. Alexandre’s approach is the thinking man’s hood, playing dumb to hide his smarts.

The dingy hotel room designed by Kravet and Alexandre could be much dingier, but Randall Michelson’s subtle noirish lights help stoke the fires of this destructing partnership.

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DETAILS

* WHAT: “Partners.”

* WHERE: Eclectic Theatre Company, 5312 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Valley Village.

* WHEN: Fridays-Saturdays at 8 p.m. through July 27.

* HOW MUCH: $10.

* CALL: (818) 995-8447.