`Criminal Hearts': Downward Spiral

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"Criminal Hearts," by Jane Martin, produced by Velvet Elvis Arts Lounge Theatre, 107 Occidental Ave. S., running through July 14. 624- 8477.

The best moment in this comedy-drama by playwright Jane Martin ("Keely & Du") comes right at the beginning, when tough-gal burglar Bo makes the mistake of breaking into the already-pillaged apartment of wealthy Ata.

Both are Chicago natives, but it's immediately clear they don't speak the same language. While Bo threatens and fumes and points a gun, Ata spouts lines about having "a suspect nervous system" and being saddled with "more problems than I should demographically have."

Bo's epithet-rich verbal abuse and Ata's frantic psychobabble seem destined to zip straight past each other, never to connect. But over the course of the next two hours, the women reach an understanding of sorts. The process, as it turns out, is a labored and over-long conversion of Ata to a revenge-motivated criminal career. But the women's initial clash holds promise, especially given the vivid stage presences of Kate Witt, as pizza-gobbling basket-case Ata, and Vicki Hannon, as swaggering Bo.

Ata, it turns out, has good reasons for cracking up: her husband, after mutual infidelities (his numerous, hers a one-time-only), has left her and taken all the furniture with him. As for Bo, she has a right to feel cheated: she cased this luxury apartment carefully, and now all it has to offer are empty soda cans and pizza cartons.

Bo's impatient sidekick (Daniel Chercover) and Ata's husband (Greg Kevin Delaney) eventually put in appearances. But the dramatic tension, instead of building, becomes more and more diffuse. Blame lies partly with director Carolyn Budd, who could speed things up, but mostly with a script that too often uses its characters as mouthpieces to hammer points home.

In the theater community there is much speculation as to whether Jane Martin, a pseudonym, is male or female. In either case, the playwright caters in a condescending way to female resentment of male dastardliness. When Ata castigates her husband as "a scarecrow man got up for the '90s," she sums up the play's shortcomings in a line: its odds feel stacked and its villain flimsily contrived.

The design crew offers an attractive nighttime Chicago skyline, and the pizza-carton towers are fun. But the brightest thing about this production remains the talents of Witt and Hannon as they pilot Martin's unwieldy vessel into port. Both are performers to watch.