SERIOUS--MINDED AND LIGHTHEARTED CHOICES : East Versus West Circle Warily in ‘A Walk in the Woods’

“No one ‘speaks’ technical Russian. It’s like saying ‘I speak algebra,’ ” says Andrey Botvinnik, setting the scene for Lee Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods.”

It is around such contentions that Blessing has built this play.

A duologue really. “Woods,” which opened Sunday at the La Jolla Playhouse (and comes to us via the Yale Repertory, where it had its premiere in February with the same director but a different cast), is cynicism on wry: the fictional private encounters of two arms negotiators in Geneva--one, Botvinnik (Michael Constantine), a shopworn, worldly Soviet who has learned there is nothing to do but relax about these matters; the other, John Honeyman (Lawrence Pressman), a “lower level” American, charged up by his heady promotion and too earnest and raw to know how to stalk an agreement.

Honeyman wants only to be serious; Botvinnik is bone tired of seriousness. He wants to be frivolous but Honeyman doesn’t know how. “Call me Andrey,” pleads Botvinnik, who wants to be friends and talk about “Mickey Mouse, cowboys and how to make a banjo.” Honeyman, being new, doesn’t trust being friends, and all the trivia he can come up with is that he hates brown suits.

Boh-rrring, cries Botvinnik, who’s an old hand at sparring with confidence while Honeyman stumbles from one foolishly impassioned speech to the next. What are we doing out here in these woods, the gung-ho American wants to know, if it isn’t to have a serious conversation? Fooling the reporters, winks the world-weary Soviet--and, tell me, do you like country and Western music?

These are witty, modulated exchanges, overtures to the long afternoons of a fox and a fawn. “A Walk in the Woods” is an argument in four scenes with an intermission--rather like life. It’s a form of subtle despair brushed with hope and buoyed by humor. It’s human and thankless. Its dialogue shimmers, bristles with earthiness and surprise, a balance that rescues it from the formulaic oblivion where two-character plays are so often remanded (even if it’s not entirely spared some predictability).

And of course, it’s also topical--as topical as the Iran/ contra hearings. Would we send a rookie to conduct high-level talks, someone in Sunday’s audience asked. Of course we would. The man has . . . commitment. It takes him nine months--the time span of the play--to understand that no one really wants an agreement, only the appearance of wanting an agreement. Nuclear weapons are essential. Without them, Botvinnik explains, our countries would no longer be superpowers, only “a rich, powerful Canada and an enormous Poland.”

The inspiration for Blessing’s play was a real political event, the historic “walk in the woods” of Paul Nitze and Yuli Kvitsinsky, chief arms negotiators to Intermediate Range Nuclear Force (INF) talks in 1982. The two worked out a mutually agreeable proposal that was met by a hail of criticism and eventual rejection by the governments of both countries. Balance of power apparently means leaving everything in the balance.

Blessing’s skill in filling in the imaginary blanks lies in playing not only with words, but with ideas, and keeping us surprised at every turn. We want to believe as Honeyman believes: that if a proposal is good enough, it will be ratified; that if a line is truthful, it will be believed. But as Botvinnik tells us, it’s not how this old world works.

Blessing’s characters are so carefully chiseled, his Botvinnik blessed with such epigrammatic wisdom that we come under his thrall and contentedly set aside the artificiality of the form. And Constantine seems born to the role--a shrewd old uncle, part crook, part corner grocer, part brilliant majority whip.

As his fervent straight man, Pressman has fewer opportunities to sparkle, but he is not a jot less impressive. These are two superb craftsmen having at and bouncing off each other under the very astute guidance of director Des McAnuff. Two-character plays can be as hard to stage persuasively as to perform. Blessing is served splendidly by this trio.

Physically, the production is breathtaking. Richard Riddell has created lighting to reflect different times of the year. You can almost smell the pine needles in the deep woods designed by Bill Clarke, which change with every season. (How do those spring flowers pop up so magically on the mountain?)

The reverberations of the three encasing walls, however, and especially the painting hanging on the center one, are a lot less successful. One can see the symbolic allusion to endless conference rooms, but the painting--green trees in the first half, denuded ones in the second--reaches awfully far, presumably pointing to the progression from youth to age, hope to stagnation. It’s a directorial fillip that only burdens what is otherwise a simple, seductive, engrossing and utterly captivating piece.

‘A WALK IN THE WOODS’ A play by Lee Blessing presented by La Jolla Playhouse in association with Yale Repertory Theatre. Director Des McAnuff. Assistant director Beverly Smith-Dawson. Set Bill Clarke. Lighting Richard Riddell. Costumes Ellen V. McCartney. Music Michael S. Roth. Sound G. Thomas Clark. Dramaturge Walter Bilderback. Stage manager Maureen F. Gibson. Cast Michael Constantine, Lawrence Pressman. Performances at Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts, Torrey Pines Road and La Jolla Village Drive, Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 p.m.; matinees Saturdays, Sundays at 2 p.m. until Aug. 16. Tickets: $18-$23; (619) 534-3960.

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