If you ever become the recipient of a large amount of money, your wisest course of action is to immediately store it in one or more bank accounts until you can think about it without your heartbeat racing. Do not share the news of your windfall with others, or spend time staring at the check ("Wow! Look at all those zeroes!"), or you could succumb to the hazards of unexpected loot and end up like the characters in Dorothy Fortenberry's play. Paul and Clare are a married couple, living in a cozy apartment furnished from Crate & Barrel or maybe Target), in keeping with Paul's salary as an IT worker for a law firm and Clare's earnings at her part-time job. Their best friends are gay couple Ezra and Brady (respectively, Clare's childhood chum and his boyfriend, a teacher of at-risk children). Ezra's dream is to peddle Clare's innovative nosherai from his own food-truck, but when Clare is awarded a settlement as a result of a long-ago legal action, it sets the four comrades to squabbling over which of them is most deserving of this bounty. Make that three comrades. Brady, having been raised in an atmosphere of affluence, recognizes wealth as the useful substance that it is, unlike Ezra, Paul and Clare, to whom a six-figure sum signifies the fulfillment of their every wish, including many things that money can't buy. Resentments over trivial inequities arise—the luxury of hired help to clean your house vs. that of a visit to a cosmetic dermatologist, for example, or the priority of a husband's long-term goals over a best friend's immediate medical needs. Pressured by emotional conflict emanating from her nearest confidantes, Clare squanders her fortune in likewise fantasy-based choices, increasing her distress and further impairing her judgment. It would be easy for audiences to become similarly dazzled by the dollar signs, blinding them to Fortenberry's assertion that what threatens—or strengthens—loyalties is not the lucre itself, but the individual's attitude toward it. LiveWire director Kendra Miller delivers the playwright's sermon in Partners with a light touch—indeed, except for the temperamentally centered Brady, the characters often come off as so ingenuous that you wonder why they don't just consult their parents. The importance of exploring and, even more importantly, assessing the link between material values and domestic values cannot be denied, making this play mandatory viewing for those contemplating marriage, whether het or same-sex.
