AS CHEKHOV INTENDED IT.

Byline: Reed Johnson Theater Critic

Near the end of Michael Langham and Helen Burns' unflinching, beautifully articulated production of ``Uncle Vanya'' at the Geffen Playhouse, the emotionally crippled title character poses for a photograph with his brother-in-law, Serebryakov, a vain, tyrannical art professor.

Peter Donat, the elegantly attenuated actor playing Serebryakov, strikes a purposefully ostentatious pose, showing off his character's fine clothes while grinning self-importantly.

Next to him, Robert Foxworth's Vanya forces a half-hearted smile, knowing full well that his one chance at happiness - in the form of the professor's beautiful second wife, Yelena - is about to exit his life forever, leaving him to mete out his days in boring, provincial Ukraine.

Presently, a terrified look of utter desolation steals over Foxworth's furrowed face, as if he were glimpsing not just his own future but a more devastating and sweeping human futility.

The moment is there and gone. Blink and you'll probably miss it.

Happily, however, there are dozens more fleeting, gemlike details to catch and savor in this production co-directed by the gray-haired but creatively youthful royal couple of the English-speaking theater world.

As Richard Gilman (among others) has pointed out, there's a tendency when producing Chekhov's late masterpieces either to swathe them in languorous period nostalgia or stage them as previews of the coming Revolution.

Langham, Burns and their very adept ensemble wisely concentrate instead on Chekhov's richly complicated views of family and interpersonal relationships, building the production as Chekhov built his visionary play: through a subtle but irrevocable accumulation of telling emotional encounters.

Take the instance early in Act 1 when the audience first sees the passionate, pent-up feelings that Vanya's niece Sonya (Megan Follows) harbors toward the handsome, idealistic, brutally disillusioned Dr. Astrov (Stephen Pelinski). After rescuing a drooping tea cup from the weary doctor's outstretched hand, Follows takes his teaspoon and gives it a brisk, lascivious lick. As delicately imagined and lustily executed, this lovely moment exemplifies the production as a whole.

A storied director who has run Canada's prestigious Stratford Festival and the Guthrie in Minneapolis, Langham has drawn from his past to assemble an exceptional ensemble. Follows, the play's emotional anchor, is superb as the dutifully stoic Sonya, as is Pelinski (another Guthrie regular), teetering between indignation and resignation.

Foxworth locates a surprising amount of levity in his self-deprecating Vanya. He gracefully underplays scenes in which Vanya's bitterness threatens to swamp his dialogue, tempering a portrait etched in painfully lucid honesty.

Fred Applegate's Telyegin, the family's floridly respectable tenant farmer, conveys a very Russian streak of sentimentality without mushiness, while Gloria Dorson interjects feisty peasant wisdom as the old nurse. Anne Gee Byrd is exactly what Vanya's aged mother should be: unobtrusive and effective.

That leaves Christina Haag as the beautiful, disaffected Yelena, possibly the play's most difficult role. Emphasizing Yelena's youthful confusion and emotional shallowness without passing judgment on them, Haag goes a good way toward making sense of this pre-modern character.

Robert Blackman's costumes and Neil Peter Jampolis' scenery and lighting all look great, though someone needs to keep the hose out of sight during the Act 2 rainstorm. Brusque violins and eruptive piano flourishes effectively punctuate scene changes - as did the appreciative sniffs and throat-clearings all around me on opening night. Something tells me there'll be more of those.

The facts

What: ``Uncle Vanya.''

Where: Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village.

When: Through Oct. 31. Performances 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 4 and 8:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. 2 p.m. matinee Oct. 20.

Tickets: $20 to $42; $25 for Oct. 20 matinee. Call [phone].

Our rating: Three and one half stars

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Photo

PHOTO Robert Foxworth, seated, plays Vanya and Stephen Pelenski the handsome Dr. Astrov in the production at the Geffen Playhouse.