A Nimble Take on a Less Than Novel Premise

A cranky little two-character job, Lee Kalcheim’s “Defiled” is a bomb-threat play in which a wily cop and a sociopathic librarian get to know each other. They get to know each other well enough for the librarian to deliver monologues that begin with lines such as “You sound like my father. He was a practical man. He ran a hardware store. . . .”

Yikes! Send in the best two actors you have, and maybe we can save this thing! Well, here’s the good news. At the Geffen Playhouse world premiere, Peter Falk plays the cop. Jason Alexander plays the librarian. Falk and Alexander play “Defiled” like a fiddle.

The play ain’t much of a fiddle, but good fiddlers are good fiddlers.

Best known for his comedy “Breakfast With Les and Bess,” playwright Kalcheim establishes an extremely simple setup. Harry Mendelssohn (Alexander) is a technophobic librarian, recently fired, enraged over his boss’ decision to do away with his beloved catalog-card filing system. Those durn computers! Taking over the planet! It just makes you want to strike back, to make a statement, preferably with dynamite.

Police Det. Brian Dickey is portrayed by Falk, sporting what must be the finest head of hair seen on an L.A. stage so far this century. Dickey’s sent into the library to negotiate with Harry. He’s dealt with bomb threats before. He’s close to retirement. He just wants some peace, some easy time with his (unseen) wife, some time for fly-fishing in Ireland.

Harry wants justice, not peace. He’s a man for all resentments, still aching over a broken engagement 18 years ago. Further back, as a child, he wanted a collie dog; his father, a stubbornly practical man, bought him a short-haired yippy thing instead. Hence the play’s subtitle: “The Convenience of a Short Haired Dog.”

Kalcheim has here a 30-minute or, optimistically, a 60-minute piece. It has been stretched to over 100, short by most standards but plenty long in this case. The intermissionless structure is designed to sustain the tension, but as negotiations plod on, with Harry’s sweaty hand clutching a homemade detonator, “Defiled” starts spinning in smaller and smaller circles.

Kalcheim’s earlier works dating to the 1960s contain characters longing for the good old days, warning against the promises of progress. In “Defiled,” Harry continually goes off on anti-technology rants--call them “the Ted Kaczynski moments”--fueled by the librarian’s primary fear: that the printed word will soon go the way of the buggy whip, and computers will suck us all into their maw. In 80 years, Harry says, poof!--books as we know and love them, gone.

The character’s single-minded. So is the play. Too often, in between some decent zingers, Kalcheim settles for generalized ranting at the usual subjects: shopping malls, the sound-bite mentality, Home Depot, the divorce rate. Also, when beleaguered Harry talks by phone to his ex-girlfriend, who has become a travel agent, you wait for a line at least acknowledging that travel agents are struggling to adapt to the Net culture a lot more so than librarians. The kicker never comes.

Director Barnet Kellman stages “Defiled” efficiently. Falk is the tortoise, methodically ladling out his lines, working in a zone of extreme comfort. Alexander, physically coiled and fidgety, is the hare, perpetually on edge. Falk and Alexander make themselves at home on D. Martyn Bookwalter’s handsome library set, cleverly designed to fold into the Geffen auditorium’s own brickwork. The designs are sharp, right down to Jon Gottlieb’s offstage hubbub.

The actors could do only so much opening night to minimize the nervous laughter coming from an audience both starry and starry-eyed. (In an apparent show of collective defiance of the play’s theme, huge numbers of first-nighters refused to turn off their pagers.) To be sure, “Defiled” is a nervous-laughter play. But Kalcheim’s tone isn’t so much complex as it is uncertain.

And, finally, we’ve seen these guys before. By the time the librarian says to the cop, “We are not that different, you and I,” “Defiled” has already filed itself under “PREMISE, OVEREXTENDED.”

* “Defiled,” Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 7:30 p.m.; Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 4 and 8:30 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. Also: 2 p.m. June 14 and 15. No performances June 13 and June 16-18. Ends July 2. $20-$42. (310) 208-5454. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Peter Falk: Brian Dickey

Jason Alexander: Harry Mendelssohn

Nancy Mette: Voice of Melinda

David Spielberg: Voice of Sentana

Written by Lee Kalcheim. Directed by Barnet Kellman. Scenic design by D. Martyn Bookwalter. Costumes by Tom McKinley. Lighting by Daniel Ionazzi. Sound by Jon Gottlieb. Production stage manager Elsbeth M. Collins.