As good actors age  perhaps a more felicitous word would be mature  they learn how to do more with less.  Sara Krulwich/The New York Times  “Collected Stories”: Linda Lavin, left, and Sarah Paulson at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater.  Sara Krulwich/The New York Times  Sarah Paulson, left, plays the eager student of Linda Lavin, an established writer, in Donald Margulies’s play “Collected Stories.”  Consider the left eyebrow of Linda Lavin, the veteran star of the new revival of Donald Margulies’s “Collected Stories.” At one point in this durable drama about the manners and morals of writers, Ms. Lavin raises said eyebrow by perhaps half an inch. She says nary a word, and doesn’t move any other muscle, but still communicates with this minimal gesture more than a lesser actor might squeeze from a long monologue.  She gets a solid laugh too.  The arcing eyebrow is a frequent gesture for Ruth Steiner, the smart, skeptical central figure in Mr. Margulies’s 1996 play, which has been produced twice off Broadway but now moves with relative ease to Broadway and the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, where it opened Wednesday night in a production directed by Lynne Meadow for Manhattan Theater Club.  Ruth burst onto the literary scene with a book of short stories that earned her instant fame in her early 20s. The fame faded, and Ruth has since become a respected but little-celebrated member of the establishment, teaching writing to the young and the ambitious in New York City.  Moderate success has earned her a cozy, book-lined perch in the West Village. But her dedication to the art of fiction, and the nurturing of other writers, has been the focus of her life. She never married and never had children. The perch is also a bit of a fortress.  Ms. Lavin evinces with every sardonic inflection and studied pause the cool distance with which Ruth observes the world, beginning with her students and their fledgling attempts at displaying their literary plumage. She nearly breaks out in hives at the ebullient admiration of Lisa Morrison (Sarah Paulson), the student she’s allowed to breach the fortress for a consultation about the story she’s written for Ruth’s class.  Lisa’s flaxen hair and wholesome eagerness do not quite match the knotty intensity of her story about a girl suffering from an eating disorder. “Almost without exception my students tend to look like their stories,” Ruth says dryly, clearly implying that she expected Lisa to resemble nightshade rather than a sunflower.  “So am I not a serious-looking person?” Lisa asks falteringly.  “No, you’re not,” comes the blunt reply.  But Lisa’s talent intrigues Ruth, and as their relationship evolves  Lisa jumps at the chance to become her assistant  Ruth also comes to see in her protégée a version of the unworldly aspirant to the citadel of art that she once was herself, a nobody from Detroit who found herself sitting across from the poet Delmore Schwartz in a West Village tavern. Ruth’s wary demeanor begins to thaw when she reveals to Lisa the story of her affair with the poet, who was by then “descending rapidly,” as Ruth puts it.  As Ruth reflects on the past, Ms. Lavin herself seems to shed years, as the regenerating warmth of nostalgia flows like new blood in Ruth’s veins. The voice, normally tinged with complaint or suspicion, softens and slows into an almost hypnotic purr; the eyes gleam with youthful excitement and vivid pain as she recalls the highs and lows.  “I’m not particularly proud of all that happened and yet ... it was my shining moment,” Ruth says, and Ms. Lavin invests the words with a piercing truth. This moment of intimacy between mentor and protégée will prove to be a fateful passage in their relationship.  Mr. Margulies, the Pulitzer Prize winner whose “Time Stands Still” preceded “Collected Stories” at the same theater, making this spring season a miniature festival of his work, has found fertile material in the struggles of the creative classes to reconcile the demands of ambition with the exigencies of life. His breakthrough play, “Sight Unseen,” considered the exacting cost of success for a painter, and “Time Stands Still” explored the widening emotional gulf between a photographer and a journalist with diverging views about their vocations.  “Collected Stories” is a more modest, tightly focused play than either of those works, but it also digs into its engaging tale of aesthetics and ethics with intelligence and sharp, literate humor. (Among the best jokes is a gag about The New Yorker magazine.) When Lisa’s first book of stories is received with the same éclat Ruth’s once occasioned, the balance of power in their relationship slowly begins to shift, and by the end of the play the grateful ingénue has become a far more complicated figure, as Ruth’s interaction with Lisa exposes a new emotional susceptibility.  Ms. Paulson gives an effective performance as the naïve young woman who proves to be surprisingly adept at negotiating the rocky terrain of the New York publishing world. She could profitably blend in a few more suggestions of the canny operator beneath the surface ingenuousness, however, particularly in the second act. Ms. Paulson’s teary earnestness in the climactic scene rings true, and yet it’s not the whole story.  Although the roles are roughly equal, the balance of sympathy will always favor Ruth, who dominates the play with her bone-dry humor and aggrieved dignity. Ms. Lavin, who has played the role twice onstage and has also filmed it for PBS, knows this woman down to her fingertips. She embodies this classic New York type just as she nailed a rather more outlandish type in her peerlessly funny performance in Charles Busch’s heavenly “Tale of the Allergist’s Wife.”  The great Uta Hagen, who played Ruth in the 1998 Off Broadway production, was perhaps more ferocious and emotionally raw. Ms. Lavin’s performance is smaller scaled but no less affecting in its gradual revelation of the vulnerable woman beneath the polished professional.  In the play’s scorching final scene Ruth unleashes a torrent of fury at Lisa for what she perceives as a betrayal. Underneath her burning righteousness Ms. Lavin makes clear how great is the emotional cost Ruth will pay for it. By the end of the scene she is shaken and spent, a collapsed shell of the crisp, commanding figure we met when the play began. The moral high ground can be lonely terrain.  By Donald Margulies; directed by Lynne Meadow; sets by Santo Loquasto; costumes by Jane Greenwood; lighting by Natasha Katz; music and sound by Obadiah Eaves; wig design by Paul Huntley; production stage manager, Laurie Goldfeder; general manager, Florie Seery; associate artistic director, Mandy Greenfield; production manager, Kurt Gardner. Presented by the Manhattan Theater Club, Ms. Meadow, artistic director; Barry Grove, executive producer. At the Samuel J. Friedman Theater, 261 West 47th Street, Manhattan; (212) 239-6200. Through June 13. Running time: 2 hours.  WITH: Linda Lavin (Ruth Steiner) and Sarah Paulson (Lisa Morrison).  An photo caption in an earlier version of this article on the Web incorrectly referred to Donald Margulies as Daniel Margulies.
Linda Lavin and Sarah Paulson star in a Broadway production of “Collected Stories,” Donald Margulies’s vision of literary isolation.