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Put two roosters together and what do you have — a knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out fight. And this is exactly what happens in Thomas Gibbons' play "Permanent Collection," on stage through Feb. 21 at Round House Theatre in Bethesda.

Sure, these fighters aren't feathered fowl nor do they actually come to blows. Instead, they are two middle-aged men who squabble, scream and eventually litigate while surrounded by the United States' largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art.

At first, it's easy to take sides, especially when Sterling North (Craig Wallace) opens the play with a heart-wrenching monologue about the first morning he drove to his new job as Morris Foundation's executive director. After years in the corporate world, he was excited to be working with rarified art.

But reality sets in when a cop stops North. He has become accustomed to this humiliating inconvenience. The businessman recalls lecturing his own children on how to negotiate said situations politely. Driving a Jaguar in an affluent white neighborhood, he will always be suspect. As the audience sits in silence, wondering about his response to the unprovoked stop, North proves it is best not to mess with this guy.

But then again, North has no idea he soon will deal with the foundation's gaunt education director Paul Barrow, who seems cordial enough at their first meeting. Some might wonder if Barrow harbors resentment, considering he was passed over for the position after years of working for the foundation's late owner Alfred Morris, who he refers to as a "bastard." When the men discuss how the late philanthropist Morris gave oversight of the foundation and its billion-dollar art collection to a small African American college, Barrow has the temerity to say the old man did it as a "gesture of contempt."

Exactly what these words mean will be open to debate throughout the play. Some might say Morris was devoted to the college he had closely worked for years, while others might suggest he was sticking it to the corporate-driven art establishment he detested; he believed they were hungrily hoping to obtain some of the valuable art.

Still North is no angel, especially when he sets off a slight seismic tremor in this quiet suburban compound when he immediately replaces Morris' longtime executive assistant with his own aide Kanika Weaver. And it only get worse when on North's second day, Barrow takes the new director and Weaver on a tour. North knows his art history and spots a priceless collection of African art tucked away in the basement. Within a few days of employment, he demands that eight of the most important pieces be brought up and shown beside the Cezannes and Renoirs. It seems fair enough, but the trouble is Morris' will specifies that the paintings, carefully hung by their owner, remain located exactly as they are in perpetuity.

At one minute, folks might be rooting for North, while at the next, it's Team Barrow. And that is exactly what the play's director, Timothy Douglas, hopes the audience will experience.

"The play is provocative, and if it's successful, it will open up intellectual conversations," Douglas explains. He also understands that when it comes to race relations, "it is bizarre. We haven't come to terms with it. [As an African-American man,] I deal with it 17 times a day."

In fact, the play is loosely based on a drama still unfolding in the Philadelphia area. Philanthropist Alfred Barnes bought up hundreds of priceless impressionist paintings during the Great Depression, then built a space for them to be shown in one of the city's outer suburbs. Barnes wasn't interested in creating a museum, but rather an educational component and for decades, the only spectators were students and average folk, rarely the art elite. He allowed visitors, but only by appointment. Upon his death, he bequeathed controlling interest to the Foundations Board of Directors to Girard Trust Bank and Lincoln College, a historically African American college. As monies dwindled, exactly what to do with the historic building and its artwork has caused debate and even civic demonstrations. When it comes to vast sums of money, priceless artwork and race relations, all hell can and generally does break loose.

That's what concerned Jeff Allin (Paul Barrow) when he first read the play.

"I worried if the issue of race would be a polemic. I wanted to make my character real. I didn't want to get into any trap," he explains.

Craig Wallace's [Sterling North] reaction was slightly different.

"Jeff [Paul Barrow] wins," he recalls thinking, since legally Morris' will states exactly how the artwork should be handled. Yet he came to understand that this play offers a more nuanced take on these two men who, no matter what, "can't get along or even talk to each other."

Kanika, the young assistant, repeatedly attempts to mediate between these middle-aged bulls by pleading, "Put yourself in my place." Of course, neither wants to walk in the other's moccasins. And once a reporter, who North learns is working for the B section of a suburban newspaper, decides to write about their dust-up, it is clear that the art world isn't always pretty.

"Permanent Collection" isn't all feuds and fights. Jessica France Dukes (Kanika) often steals the show when she asks why they can't add a few sculptures among the "naked white women" in the rooms. She is also eager to learn about art from Barrow. His enthusiasm and appreciation for these masters and how they changed Western art forever is contagious.

From the onset, Douglas brought the cast together to share their own race-based experiences. This intimacy is a strategy he uses regardless of a play's theme because he believes that sharing experiences will ensure a more authentic play.

It was during that session that Wallace recalled the time when a simple act of walking through his neighborhood caused a woman to yell from her front door "I have a big dog in here."

The actor personally feels Sterling's words when he tells Paul, "Why can't I escape the feeling I need to become white, more than you need to become black?"

For some two hours and with one intermission, folks may talk until they drop about wills, race and the value of Western versus African art, but in the end, the lawyers always win.

"Permanent Collection" is at Round House Theatre, 4545 East West Highway, Bethesda, through Feb. 21. Performances start at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday; 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, and 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 3 p.m. Tickets range from $25 to $60. Call 240-644-1100 or visit roundhousetheatre.org.