‘Stories’ a Literary Stroll Into Moral Quicksand

Ruth Steiner (Kandis Chappell) is a respected short story writer, a sharp older woman who has little time for social niceties and who teaches in a graduate writing program at New York University. Lisa Morrison (Suzanne Cryer) is her adoring student, eager assistant, and, soon enough, her good, good friend. When Lisa finally gets published, pointedly without Ruth’s assistance, a struggle for primacy ensues, as complex and primal and laden with love as any Oedipal battle.

Playwright Donald Margulies understands that stories--mere fictions--can be a matter of life and death. His “Collected Stories,” having its world premiere at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, explores the harrowing moral quicksand of literary life, much as his play “Sight Unseen” did in the world of art. With his fine eye for detail, Margulies creates an authentic, insular world, and he gives equal weight to the opposing viewpoints of two formidable characters.

Beautifully directed by Lisa Peterson, and superbly acted, “Collected Stories” always keeps in view a certain frisson between the two women, even as they relax and begin to trust each other. Ruth combs Lisa’s stories, detecting what rings false, noticing what is true. Pretty and young and trembling with insecurity, Lisa relishes the position of chief protege. When she’s ready to grow up and claim a share of the kingdom for her own, she does so almost nonchalantly, with an almost unconscious cruelty.

When Lisa gets her first rave review from the New York Times, Ruth is momentarily frazzled. Lisa accuses her of envy, a charge that Ruth avoids with the kind of obfuscating truth that good arguers know how to employ: It’s not envy, she says, but a sadness about the long passage of time since her own first success. This is a tricky relationship, and no one is sure what kind of loyalty is owed. Complex layers of envy are uncovered one by one until the women come to an uncrossable river, and the play turns to the great literary question of our litigious times--who owns the crucial stories of a person’s life? By rights, who should tell them?

Lisa has only done what Ruth taught her to do--to observe, to get close, to turn everything she sees into fiction. Lisa takes for her first novel a sensitive chapter from Ruth’s youth that Ruth herself has never written. What Lisa sees as homage, Ruth can only sees as theft and unspeakable betrayal.

As the older woman, Chappell shows us Ruth’s steeliness, her badge of honor as an Important Writer. In a wispy gray wig, Chappell’s Ruth has a stubborn mouth and penetrating hawk eyes. She lets the steeliness melt, the mouth relax and the eyes grow wider when Ruth starts to trust Lisa. Chappell ingeniously suggests that, for Ruth, it is a relief to just relax into ordinariness.

Cryer begins as a nervous girl with shiny hair, sloppy dress and a tremor in her voice when she speaks to her idol, saying things like, “It’s a privilege to be breathing the same air space as you.” When she takes the mantle of reigning, fresh-faced literary ingenue, she displays just the right blend of girlishness and savvy. A layer of worldliness looks good on her, she seems to shed some baby fat and becomes more honest than in her fawning protege days.

To this viewer, the play had two flaws. In key passages, Margulies overwrites; he needs to condense or telescope some of the women’s arguments. It feels as if he wanted to savor every word he invented for them. Also, the ending zeros in on the wrong character. Lisa is the character we need to see at the end of the play; she’s the one who has risked most, gained most, and who must face what she’s gained and what she’s lost.

Of course, this may be hard to do, since the play takes place in Ruth’s apartment. Neil Patel’s handsome set is utterly convincing; he creates a Greenwich village apartment filled with books and papers and warm Oriental rugs, a place that looks as if it’s been lived in for 30-odd years, where opening the window over the creaky old radiator can be a major affair. Candice Cain’s costumes are likewise dead-on.

How do you worship at the altar of fiction and also be a faithful, loyal and ethical friend or family member? Are these two pursuits incompatible? “Collected Stories” doesn’t offer any answers, but it asks some of the most powerful questions available on the subject.

* “Collected Stories,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday-Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Ends Dec. 1. $18-$39. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Kandis Chappell: Ruth Steiner

Suzanne Cryer: Lisa Morrison

A South Coast Repertory production. By Donald Margulies. Directed by Lisa Peterson. Sets Neil Patel. Costumes Candice Cain. Lights Tom Ruzika. Sound Mitchell Greenhill. Wig design Carol F. Doran. Production manager Michael Mora.