Savage Productions, composed of wife and husband team Scarlett Ridgway Savage and Christopher Savage, just debuted a tense little thriller. It’s a script that’s been percolating for a couple of years, and it does a lot of things well. Scarlett Ridgway Savage has written this type of material before in “Dear Daddy, Love Cassie,” and this is another interesting iteration.

“Chase a Killer” is a fascinating look at criminal intention and the effects that sexual crimes have upon men who witness or perpetrate them. The writing is tight, tense and funny at turns, and powerful, harsh and disturbing at others. At its best, the timing is great. The charismatic actors have a good working feel for one another in the interplay of characters.

James Drake (Chris Savage) is a funny, intelligent lawyer with a hobbyist’s fixation on serial killers. Drake’s reputation is ruined, however, when he is indicted for four grisly murders and pegged as the Seacoast Slasher. He is, in fact, innocent of the crimes, and he defends himself to the point of acquittal, but he’s still held in suspicion by Detective Tim Morgan (Ed Hinton). Morgan pulls Drake in for questioning when another slasher crime takes place a few years later. A prominent local journalist, Leigh Anne McDermott (Liz Krane), has been kidnapped, and Drake is offered an opportunity to “redeem” himself in the public eye by assisting Morgan on the case (as long as the forensics don’t prove Drake to be the killer). It’s an odd premise, but the pair’s growing rapport helps viewers buy it.

As Drake and Morgan deliberate, question, surmise and postulate McDermott’s fate, the story of young Jimmy Drake (Camden Brown) unfolds downstage. Jimmy tries to make sense of the childhood physical abuse he suffered at the hands of a drunken, nameless perpetrator who sponges off of his mom. Jimmy’s girlfriend, Rory (Sam Modigliani), also from abusive and neglected circumstances, also falls prey to this creep. Together, Jimmy and Rory hatch a plan to escape their misery. That misery is embodied by Andrew Nowacki, who plays both past perpetrator (as Jimmy’s mom’s boyfriend) and present danger (as Dave Nareen).

Another monstrous turn is taken by Scott Caple, who plays a convicted misogynist murderer called Bruce the Butcher, who the missing Leigh Anne once interviewed in prison. Leigh Anne represents the strongest female voice in the play and hints at a power and fearlessness that remains underexplored in the production as a whole. To divulge too much more would rob the audience of its opportunity to watch things unfold.

Many scenes consist of two-person dialogues. The play is most riveting when four actors are onstage, playing past and present at once. The tale of young Jimmy Drake and his teenage sweetheart, Rory, plays downstage, representing the past. It’s an interesting visual metaphor, because the past becomes the foreground, illustrating youth and its accompanying powerlessness and wounding. Conversely, material that takes place in the present unfolds upstage, illustrating experience and its aftermath: Jimmy becomes James. He’s our most developed and complex character, and it takes two actors to play his many facets. In several well-choreographed scene changes, a simultaneous cause and effect scenario pans out—a past that speaks in the present. I have never seen The Players’ Ring space used this way before.

The play’s evolving tensions are interesting and complex, and the sexualized power dynamics that “Chase a Killer” explores are multifaceted. The play decries violence against women, yet neither female character gets to speak for herself in an empowered way. It’s a missed opportunity that does some disservice.

The play celebrates men who are allies to victimized women. It shows the complex role that a loved one experiences when his partner is victimized. In sexual assault intervention terms, such a person is considered a secondary victim. His path to wholeness will take a different route than his partner’s.

In the play, a sympathetic audience is placed in the conflicted position of both condemning and celebrating violence. This is problematic if one believes that cycles of violence should be interrupted. “Chase a Killer…Catch a Killer… Run, Run, Run” allows the audience to ponder where vengeance stops and healing begins. The play is exemplary, brave and theatrically intriguing. It publicly explores the nature of personal empowerment and how it differs for men and women. In the end, viewers are left to question whether undeserving victims get the chance to redefine themselves as survivors … or not.

“Chase a Killer…Catch a Killer…Run, Run, Run” will play at The Players’ Ring through March 9. Performances are at 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 7 p.m. on Sundays. Tickets are $12 general admission, $10 students and seniors, $2 off for members , 105 Marcy St., Portsmouth, 603-436-8123. For more information, visit www.playersring.org.