STAGE REVIEW : Morality Tale With Echoes of Chekhov

Romulus Linney has a great sense of simplicity, character and place, and his Appalachian plays--a region familiar from his childhood--have a poetic grip on the ordinary events and unvarnished people who inhabit them.

Like his “A Woman Without a Name,” “Unchanging Love,” now at the Fountain Theatre, starts with an a cappella hymn--the one that shares its title with the play. It is sung by an impoverished trio who call themselves the Musgrove Family Singers (father Elmer, mother Annie, daughter Judy), and whose fortunes, as they harmonize on the occasion of neighbor Benjamin Pitman’s 75th birthday, are about to sink even lower.

Based on Anton Chekhov’s short story “In the Hollow,” the play is more about the Pitmans than the Musgroves. Patriarch Benjamin (James E. Brodhead), whose new wife, Barbara (Sharon Ernster), is 30 years his junior, owns a general store and is the father of two sons: the retiring Avery (Todd Field), married to Leena (Robin Riker), a childless, self-interested woman with an eye on other men and the family business--and Shelby (Cyril O’Reilly), Benjamin’s favorite, who naturally ran off early to seek his fortune in the city.

Shelby found it in state government, where he works, he says, as “a legal department investigator.” But when he walks in unexpectedly, with pockets full of dollars and a mouthful of bragging, it turns out he’s “on official leave.”

Shelby’s instantly taken with young Judy Musgrove (Patty Mears), a bashful nymphette awed by the attention she is getting from this city slicker, and since Daddy Pitman is anxious for an heir to continue the family name, a marriage is impulsively worked out.

The union is disastrous, with unsettling revelations about Shelby’s “official leave” engulfing the entire family. A baby is born of the marriage but, with the inexorability of Greek tragedy, even this glimmer of hope is dashed in the turbulent aftermath of greed that destroys the entire tainted lot.

Stephen Sachs has beautifully captured Linney’s mix of wistfulness, scheming, horror and folklore in his well-orchestrated staging, relying on his superior company for precision of detail--from the blustery Brodhead as Benjamin, to such peripheral figures as Crutch Holston and Oats Pyatt, odious men with whom Leena maintains relationships, nicely played by Parker Whitman and Bill Dunnam.

Ken Booth’s warm lighting, Sachs’ rudimentary set and Kit McCall’s costumes enhance the simplicity of the production. But the actors are its beating heart: Ernster’s kind and forthright Barbara, Todd’s beaten-down Avery, Riker’s acerbic vulgarity as Leena, and Laura Gardner’s and Jim Roach’s Annie and Elmer Musgrove, who wear their terrible poverty like some badge of honor.

“Unchanging Love” is a small morality tale exquisitely told and punctuated by music. O’Reilly’s mercurial Shelby is at once seductive and dangerous. But nothing in this play is more affecting than Mears innocent gravity as Judy.

Despite her sorrows, she retains a wholeness the others might envy. She is luminous and timid, pliable yet strong and deeply forgiving, even in darkest adversity--cream rising to the top, while the rest of this family shatters in hatred and heartbreak beneath her. A lovely player in a lovely play.

* “Unchanging Love,” Fountain Theatre, 5060 Fountain Ave., Hollywood. Thursdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends June 14. $15-$17.50; (213) 663-1525. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes.