Read the program notes to the Chekhov Art Theater's new production of Alexander Pushkin's play in verse, "Boris Godunov," and you will quickly sense that something is wrong.


Oleg Yefremov, the show's director, its star actor and the longtime artistic director of the theater, writes passionately about the great risk of staging this, Russian literature's most enigmatic play about the enigma of power in Russia, and about the theater's duty to do it. Yefremov outlines the parallels between the present and those historical eras identified with the names of Godunov, Ivan the Terrible and Joseph Stalin, and concludes that Pushkin's poetry provides a way for "theater to survive in troubled times."


It all sounds very impressive, and let there be no doubt about Yefremov's sincerity. But his compulsive need to justify himself so weightily even before the performance begins hints loudly that the show itself doesn't say what he wanted it to. And that surely is the case.


This "Godunov," featuring Yefremov as the tsar whose reign from 1598 to his death in 1605 gave way to a crippling, eight-year power struggle, is remarkably flat and disorganized. Unable to corral the cast of more than 70 into a unified ensemble, Yefremov left all those scenes which do not concern his character to develop helter-skelter. Meanwhile, he plays the tragic Godunov with such monolithic, leaden grief that he drags the show to a halt, rather than giving it meaning.


Almost unbelievably, things occasionally get so bad that one wonders whether this isn't an amateur exhibition and not the product of one of the world's most famous theaters. Actors imitate emotion and agitation with meaningful facial expressions and guttural voices. Secondary actors stand by looking as though they are wondering whether they will ever get their money out of the crashed MMM stock society. (For comparison, watch Sergei Shnyryov's carefully nuanced silent scenes as Godunov's son, Fyodor.) Mass battle scenes are "fought" lethargically and clumsily by a mix of student extras and pros.


Godunov's chief rival is Grisha Otrepyev, an opportunistic young monk. When he hears the legend that in order to seize power Godunov murdered Dmitry, the infant heir to the throne, Otrepyev flees to Poland where he gathers an army to support his bold and false claim to power.


As played by Mikhail Yefremov, the director's son, this Otrepyev is utterly unconvincing. The actor repeatedly strikes poses rather than penetrating his character's surface, and blusters rather than mustering genuine audacity.


The evening's only sustained bright moment comes thanks to the delightful comic team of Vyacheslav Nevinny and Andrei Myagkov playing the tipsy priests who unknowingly escort the fugitive Otrepyev to the Lithuanian border. But even this success is as much a sign of the failures around it as it is anything else. So masterfully natural are the massive Nevinny and the wispy, straggly-haired Myagkov, their scene looks like a drum-tight vaudeville number played in a morgue.


The unusual set by Boris Messerer needed a better production to show it off. The walls are draped with black material striped in gold, giving the illusion that the stage is enveloped in an enormous, crude fur coat. Hanging from the flies are two huge screens that move and twirl on a circular track, and on which are projected old sketches of Moscow, fragments of icons, folk art and illuminated manuscripts.


Life at the Chekhov Art Theater has been rough in recent years. Occasional successes like "The Possible Meeting," "Behind the Mirror" and the recent "Misha's Party" have alternated with mediocrities such as "The New American" (see Marquee) and resounding flops such as "Woe from Wit" and now "Boris Godunov." In any case, anyone interested in the Godunov legend is better off going across town to the Maly Theater, where Vasily Bochkaryov works theatrical wonders in the title role of A.K. Tolstoy's "Tsar Boris."





"Boris Godunov" plays Dec. 6, 7 and 20 at 7 P.M. at the Chekhov Art Theater, 3 Kamergersky Pereulok. Tel. 229-8760. Running time: 3 hours.