O.C. THEATER : Playhouse Negotiates a Model ‘Walk in the Woods’ : Laguna company gives Lee Blessing’s comedy deft acting and fine direction. It’s the group’s best production in years.

For a while it looked as if the warming trend between the United States and the Soviet Union would moot the relevance of Lee Blessing’s “A Walk in the Woods.” As a play about a pair of nuclear-disarmament negotiators who are still operating on the old assumptions of the Cold War, it took no notice of glasnost and seemed likely to become a curious historical anachronism.

But times have changed. And the Laguna Playhouse has outdone itself with a perfect staging of “Walk,” its best production in years.

The revival, which opened over the weekend at the Moulton Theatre, is so captivating in all particulars--deft acting, fine direction and a beautiful mounting--that the temptation to use the old cliche is overwhelming: “Run, don’t walk, to see this show.”

Blessing’s two-character comedy not only deals with a provocative issue generally left to the political pundits but is entertaining without being gimmicky and funny without resorting to shtick. While I can imagine the play being done differently, I cannot imagine it being done better than the performance on Friday--not by South Coast Repertory, not by the Mark Taper Forum, not even by its original producers.

It doesn’t hurt the play’s relevance, of course, that ever since “Walk’s” premiere at Yale Repertory in 1987, glasnost has been threatened with eclipse by less-welcome Soviet developments.

We are reminded daily in the Persian Gulf, moreover, that international relations can shift with unpredictable vigor and that nothing earns more respect from the nations of the world than high-tech weaponry.

Indeed, it seems reasonable to assume that if the so-called “new world order” sought by President Bush were to come about, possession of nuclear bombs and the palpable threat of using them would remain among its most sacred guarantors. For little except the fear of a nuclear showdown appears to inspire the guardians of nuclear peace.

Which brings us to the stymied disarmament negotiators of “Walk,” who are caught in a paradoxical reality hinged on official rhetoric and contradictory meaning, public optimism and private despair, illusory action, thought divorced from feeling, superpowers living on mythology, people isolated from themselves and each other.

Andrey Botvinnik, played with canny exuberance by Michael C. Miller in a revelatory performance, is a cagey but personally warm career diplomat from the Soviet Union whose cynical wisdom and sense of irony have been sharpened by many years of deadlocked bilateral talks in Geneva with a succession of negotiators from the United States.

John Honeyman, played with repressed energy by Jim Ryan in a quieter yet nonetheless sterling performance, is a recently promoted American technocrat who has just arrived in Geneva with a fresh set of proposals, a lack of diplomatic savvy, a lumpish personality that is part provincial stiffness and part bureaucratic aloofness, and an earnest desire to reach agreement on a disarmament treaty.

Just how these two very different men finally come to terms with each other as people, to say nothing of how they personalize the issues that bring them together as negotiators, is what makes “A Walk in the Woods” such a compelling piece of theater. Both are transformed by their encounter, Honeyman considerably more than Botvinnik, yet both remain true to themselves.

Botvinnik’s witty, ingratiating, folksy charm masks a deep resignation that all the years of stalling and failure have produced in him.

Never overacting, Miller portrays him like a giant-sized imp with a purse-lipped smile that, depending on its many shadings, conveys a sense of bemusement or slyness or curiosity.

He is filled with aphorisms. When the humorless Honeyman stands on ceremony, refusing to loosen up on their walk in the woods away from the conference rooms, Botvinnik advises him that “formality is merely anger with its hair combed.” He wants Honeyman to relax.

“Be frivolous with me,” he pleads at one point.

But the Soviet diplomat also can be stern, mordantly suggesting that the only way to get the talks off dead center would be to “put a (negotiating) table at the bottom of a missile silo” instead of at the top of the peaceful Swiss mountains. And he can be eloquent, as when he chastises Honeyman for using technospeak in ordinary conversation.

It makes Botvinnik feel as if he’s he is “falling away from the Earth, receding into the darkness.”

Honeyman is all resistance to Botvinnik at first. The firm set of Ryan’s jaw, the tightly controlled body language and the shifting, noncommittal gaze would express his wariness even if his words didn’t. “Tell me,” Honeyman says, “why have we taken a walk in the woods?” He suspects Botvinnik may want to say something in private about the U.S. proposal.

When Honeyman is informed otherwise--that, in fact, his Soviet counterpart simply wants to get to know him “man to man,” to be his friend--he can’t believe it. As far as he is concerned, negotiators can’t be friends.

Nor is he going to let himself be distracted by Botvinnik’s ploy of changing subjects, an artful maneuver that the veteran diplomat uses so often it has earned him the crab-like reputation of never moving in a straight line.

Miller’s Russian-accented performance as Botvinnik, the showier of the two roles, is impeccable and scintillating. He is better than Robert Prosky was in the Broadway production of “Walk.”

Ryan has nothing to be ashamed of either. In some ways he has the more difficult task: how to be colorless without being boring.

His portrayal of Honeyman, a closet idealist at bottom, rings as true as Sam Waterston’s.

It goes without saying that Joan McGillis’ direction has etched this play with an indelible line and in just the right spirit. The technical credits are also superb, which is usual at the Playhouse, but this time even more so.

The towering trees of Jacquie Moffett’s magnificent set are breathtaking in their grandeur, establishing a sublime note of natural wonder.

If this is what an amateur production can be, let’s have more of them.

‘A WALK IN THE WOODS’

A Laguna Playhouse production of a play by Lee Blessing. Directed by Joan McGillis. With Michael C. Miller and Jim Ryan. Set design by Jacquie Moffett. Lighting by Kathy Pryzgoda. Costumes by Marthella Randall. Sound design by David Edwards. Stage manager Rita Butler. Through April 7 at the Moulton Theatre, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Performances Tuesdays to Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets: $14 to $18. Information: (714) 494-8021.