Late-night encounter leads to a catharsis

Now at the Elephant Theatre, the modestly scaled “Snowangel,� by veteran stage and screen writer Lewis John Carlino (“The Great Santini,� “The Brotherhood�), contains two characters and is less than an hour long. Even at that brief running time, Carlino’s immensely histrionic drama about a worn-out hooker’s connection to a forlorn john threatens to slop over its pint-sized container.

The action is set in an inner-city flophouse, beautifully realized in designer Joel Daavid’s squalid set and lighting. Lighted with bare-bulbs harshness, this detritus-filled room is not so much a home as a burrow where a wounded animal has gone to ground.

While a guitarist (Julio Martinez) plucks plangent melodies on a nearby balcony, boozy hooker Connie (Dale Nieli) rouses herself to welcome a late-night caller, the appropriately named John (Alex Morris).

A lovelorn guy who frequently visits pros, John gets his satisfaction reenacting his long-lost -- indeed only -- love affair with an artsy woman he met at a museum. But his attempt to pull a Pygmalion on the lowbrow Connie is doomed to failure. Frustrated by Connie’s inability to convincingly portray his intellectual onetime lover, John waxes violent. However, Connie’s sudden and wrenching revelation of her own past love humanizes her in John’s eyes, forcing him to confront the sterile objectification of women that has doomed him to loneliness.

A bit familiar and predictable, Carlino’s simple tale cannot always sustain its grandly operatic pretensions. However, thanks to the alchemical interaction among Nieli, Morris and director Ben Guillory, the play’s melodramatic elements resonate with surprising emotional truth. Indeed, the final scene will almost certainly send you foraging, ever so discreetly, for a handkerchief.

“Snowangel,� Elephant Theatre, 6320 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Ends May 27. $20. (323) 960-7822. www.plays411.com. Running time: 50 minutes.