The Ensemble Theatre at the Alhecama has a winner in its latest play, Old Wicked Songs, a two-man drama-with-humor by Jon Marans.

The production comes to the Alhecama from Vienna’s English Theatre in Austria, where it enjoyed a six-week run. Since the play is set in contemporary Vienna, this is a plus. The play also enjoyed a successful run in New York.

Actor Kenneth Tigar plays the old pedagogue with a mysterious past, and actor Denis Butkus is the young man from America looking for wisdom.

The dialogue is sharp, and from the beginning of its two acts, there are hints that accumulate: There is something not quite right about the old man, and there is something savage lurking beneath the young one’s good humor.

Butkus is Stephen Hoffman, a young piano prodigy who has lost his love of music but he doesn’t know why. Tigar portrays Professor Josef Mashkanis, eccentric and charming, strange and exceedingly Viennese.

Hoffman shows up on the old gentleman’s doorstep, looking for coaching in piano and guidance about his loss of enthusiasm. The professor instantly declares that the young man must study singing.

It is to both performers’ immense credit that they carry off the musical demands of their roles. They not only sing credibly, but they play (or at least appear to play) the grand piano in the professor’s apartment.

Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe is heard off and on throughout the two acts, punctuating the tension and crackling dialogue between the two men. Stephen is increasingly arrogant and challenging to the old man. The professor desperately tries to be a mentor to the young man, but finds it increasingly difficult. Eventually, the subterranean tensions between the two burst into the open, and the interaction becomes increasingly painful.

Playwright Marans brings things full circle at the end with humanity and love, a satisfying outcome to what might have been an almost unbearable conflict.

Jonathan Fox, the ensemble’s executive artistic director, was the stage director, and has he has shown before, he knows his craft. The pacing is gripping when it needs to be, and both actors are given full latitude to explore their characters.

The play, which runs through June 22, is a worthy evening’s dramatic entertainment.

Margo Kline covers the arts as a Noozhawk staff writer.