DRAMA FLOWS EASILY FROM `WATCH ON THE RHINE'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Theater Critic

LILLIAN HELLMAN showed how astute and worldly wise a playwright she was when she plopped the earnest and principled refugee, Kurt Muller, into the same dramatic landscape as patrician matriarch Fanny Farrelly. She went one better: She didn't merely stick Ms. Fanny and Herr Muller at the same cocktail party. She made them near kin, since Muller - a German - married Fanny's daughter.

``Watch on the Rhine'' begins as Fanny's daughter, Sara, Kurt and their three children have returned to the United States for the first time in 20 years. The play is set in 1940, about a year and a half before Peal Harbor.

Those who know ``Watch on the Rhine'' - which was also a movie - may accuse me of making too much of the mother/son-in-law dichotomy. And indeed, Miss Fanny and Herr Muller don't spend a ton of time together. Still, after watching the heroic understatement of Jeff Bergquist's performance as Muller juxtaposed against the flibbertigibbet that is Ellen Geer's Fanny Farrelly, I marveled at Hellman's use of contrasts. And, yes, at director Heidi Davis' glassy smooth ability to make these two characters - and their worlds - intersect. The production at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum is a winner.

Of Hellman's well-known plays, ``Watch on the Rhine'' isn't often performed. Its too-pat construction undoubtedly works against it. How convenient for the plot, for example, that the mustache-twirling Teck de Brancovis (played by Ted Barton), a Nazi sympathizer, is a guest at the Farrellys' house just as the anti-fascist Kurt and Sara (Melora Marshall) arrive. How further convenient that De Brancovis' wife, Marthe (Abby Craden), is in love with Fanny's son, David (Chad Jason Scheppner). Hellman has placed the combustible elements in the same cauldron and let them set themselves ablaze. To some extent, the play writes itself.

However, as a still-timely portrait of a man - a family - who has chosen to spend his life looking over his shoulder in the name of his beliefs, ``Watch on the Rhine'' is both tough as nails and devastatingly sad. Davis' cast gets it exactly right.

The effectiveness begins and ends with Bergquist, who plays Muller as a quiet, stammering freedom fighter, a man you would ordinarily overlook. His English lacks confidence, the man is utterly unassuming. When Muller explains his past to Fanny, you get the sense he may be recounting it for the first time. The play's really juicy speeches - the ones Hellman could have recited herself - are delivered by Sara (Melora Marshall). But it's Bergquist who all but carries the production.

Geer is far less restrained, and her Fanny Farrelly occasionally comes across as someone who has walked in off the set of a Tennessee Williams play. ``Watch on the Rhine'' may also be a play concerning the eye-opening of a family - and to some extent of America. Hellman didn't intend Fanny - and certainly not David - to come across twittish.

Although there are fewer places more bucolic to see a play than the Theatricum, ``Watch on the Rhine'' would benefit from an indoor staging and, yes, slightly nicer furnishings. Actors at a recent Saturday night showing had to compete with a group of crickets that could out-treep an air-raid siren. Soft-spoken Natalie Case, as the Mullers' intellectual youngest son, Bodo, was the greatest casualty.

Otherwise, the production was largely seamless. Davis knows how to intersperse fear and comfort. Her production offers plenty of shades of gray. The play gets a much-needed new airing, and the cast - Bergquist most notably - treats it with elegance.

Evan Henerson, [phone]

evan.henerson(at)dailynews.com

WATCH ON THE RHINE - Three and one half stars

Where: Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Road, Topanga.

When: 3 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday; through Oct. 16.

Tickets: $8 to $25. Call [phone].

In a nutshell: Pre-war is hell, too.