'Three Sisters,' with Maggie Gyllenhaal

For Maggie Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard and director Austin Pendleton, the tiny Classic Stage Company on East 13th Street has become the unexpected home of indie-Chekhov - intimate, conversational stagings of the turn-of-the-last century Russian masterworks.

The latest, "Three Sisters," is less audacious but more consistent than the 2009 "Uncle Vanya." If the production isn't quite unforgettable - and I'm afraid it is not - the blame may rest on the decision to stretch the three-hour evening with two energy-draining intermissions.

And yet, once again, Gyllenhaal proves herself a disturbing, luxuriously complicated Chekhov female, her wholesome beauty charged-up with a moody, subversive intelligence. Again, Sarsgaard (the actress' real-life love and fellow indie star) captures the heat and shadow of a doomed push-pull relationship with her.

This time, Gyllenhaal, who plays middle-sister Masha, and Sarsgaard, the unhappily married Vershinin, are part of an expert ensemble that unifies the impetuous style without pulling it out of shape. This is, after all, the tragicomedy of three over-educated sisters in the dull countryside, each different but all yearning for the sophistication of Moscow, all loving what they cannot have and learning to endure without getting what they need.

Juliet Rylance finds the steely vulnerability in Irina, the youngest sister, who goes from hopeful girl to drudge as her dreams collapse. Jessica Hecht has a heartbreaking sense of repressed robustness as Olga, the eldest sister too often played as a colorless spinster.

Perhaps most striking is the way Marin Ireland lets us understand why the lower-class wife of their disappointed brother (Josh Hamilton) was provoked into becoming such a nasty vulgarian. With Louis Zorich as the disastrously fatalistic old military man and such pros as Roberta Maxwell and George Morfogen as the decrepit servants, Chekhov's restless curiosity about future generations is firmly grounded in the vanishing past.

The handsome, expansive sets (by Walt Spangler) use so much of the small theater that the audience, sitting on three sides, almost feels part of the Russian estate. But why no samovars?

On the other hand, Pendleton and the modern but not jarring translation by Paul Schmidt has Gyllenhaal's Masha prowling like an educated cat while reciting the Pushkin poem about the chained educated cat. It seems petty to complain about props.