Chalk up another winner for the Mossoviet Theater, which has recently emerged as Moscow's liveliest large playhouse. Whether in majestic costume dramas on its main stage, or in experimental shows on its intimate "Stage Under the Roof," the Mossoviet has repeatedly pushed the right buttons to keep its audiences happy.


The newest outing, a sweeping dramatization of Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," is almost certain to be the venue's most popular yet. A tearjerker that never shies away from the emotional release of comedy, it may be formulaic, but its formulas are honed to perfection.


Director Yury Yeryomin (he also wrote the dramatization) has made brilliant use of Maria Rybasova's grandiose, two-tiered set with a revolving lower half that allows a multitude of visual angles on the interior of the provincial home of Doctor Charles Bovary (Yevgeny Lazarev). Not only does the decoration provide the same kind of rapid setting changes that are usually the property of cinema, but it also echoes Emma Bovary's true mental state: At key moments, the rooms spin away, leaving the despairing Emma (Olga Ostroumova) to face a gaping, black void.


For all the complexity of the setting and the elegance of Viktoria Sevryukova's costumes, Yeryomin has packed his production with simple details whose effects are powerful and far-reaching.


Early on, Emma's lover Rodolphe (Alexander Goloborodko) tip-toes across gravel spread in front of the kitchen window, the faint crunching sounds he makes implying the superficial tact that he and Emma observe as they slip into an affair. But by the time Emma has descended irreversibly into despair and deceit, her young lover Leon (Dmitry Shcherbina) races carelessly across the gravel, making a harsh racket that might be the sound of a life gone wrong.


Ostroumova's Emma first appears as a dreamy romantic whose discontent with her uninspiring husband and her narrow life seems quite harmless. Girlish and light-headed, she flinches in fright when she realizes that her boredom is about to drive her to adultery. But once the step is taken, there is no turning back. She overwhelms even her more cautious lovers, growing to hate her husband with a cold, cutting ferocity. If the actress does not always lay bare the inner motivations of a trapped, lonely and limited woman, she does an impeccable job of showing us the crumbling facade.


As Emma's fawning husband in baggy pants, Lazarev is less the disgusting figure his wife sees in him than a sympathetic softy who does not realize it was his tragedy to marry the wrong woman. Walking in a permanently hunched position and always ready to throw himself at Emma's feet, Lazarev's Charles is a man with an immeasurable heart and a finite imagination.


Brilliant throughout, the actor is stunning when, for a brief moment, he thinks he has pulled off a complex operation that will make him famous and wealthy. He bursts into an uncharacteristic, heart-rending dance of joy that is as short-lived as his happiness will prove to be.


In keeping with this production's well-crafted emphasis on the paradoxes of human nature, Vladimir Sulimov is believably charming as the salesman who drives Emma into crippling debt, while Anatoly Adoskin is kindly and sympathetic as Homer, the busybody druggist who symbolizes the pettiness of provincial life and inadvertently supplies the poison that will resolve Emma's problems.





"Madame Bovary" plays Feb. 10, 19 and 24 at 7 P.M. at the Mossoviet Theater, 16 Bolshaya Sadovaya. Tel. 200-5943. Running time: 3 hours, 10 mins.