A matriarch watches her family unravel in Sergei Zhenovach’s adaptation of a 19th-century story.

Sergei Zhenovach has an affinity for sprawling tales about constellations of people whose lives intersect and intertwine. Working with the Fomenko Studio years ago, he staged productions of William Faulkner’s novel “The Sound and the Fury” and Ivan Turgenev’s drama “A Month in the Country.” During his short-lived tenure as the chief director at the Theater Na Maloi Bronnoi in the mid-1990s, he mounted an enormous, 12-hour trilogy based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot” that ran over the course of three days. His first production at the Maly Theater when he began working there occasionally in 2000 was Alexander Griboyedov’s big social satire “Woe From Wit.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that when Zhenovach went looking for the first work he would stage with his newly-formed Studio of Theatrical Art, he would settle on an old, 19th-century chronicle that observes the ups and downs of a Russian family over several generations. “A Family in Decline” is an unfinished prose work by Nikolai Leskov about the Protozanovs and the people who come into contact with them. Leskov’s tale, and Zhenovach’s dramatization of it, are as traditional and solid as a well-built samovar. For the record, “A Family in Decline” is actually the fourth production in the young theater’s repertoire. And it officially opened at the tail end of last season. At that time, it joined three former student shows that the troupe performed regularly throughout its first year as a professional theater, and will continue to perform as this season unfolds. These shows have since been joined by still another new production called “Ob-lo-mov-shchina” — a dramatization of Ivan Goncharov’s 19th-century novel “Oblomov” — but details of that will be held for a future discussion in this space.

As designed by Alexander Borovsky, the set for “A Family in Decline” looks like a panel of various-shaped picture frames. The oval, round and square holes in the panel are empty until actors step into them and bring the family portraits to life. The two tiers of picture frames also function as doors or windows as the action progresses. Color plays only a minor role in the set and in Borovsky’s historically accurate costumes. Shades of gray, black and white predominate, as they might in an album of dusty old photographs.

Leskov’s narratives and descriptions of the family history and adventures belong to the voice of a young woman named Vera. Zhenovach assigned this functional role in the production to Anna Rud, who often stands by in the shadows or margins and observes the goings-on with a cool eye.

Varvara (Maria Shashlova) is Vera’s grandmother and the matriarch of the Protozanov family. Our first glimpse of her comes when she is still a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. The dashing young officer Lev (Andrei Shibarshin) appears to her as if he were the living portrait of happiness, prosperity, security and stability. It takes no time whatsoever before the two are married and their first child, a girl named Anastasia, Vera’s future mother, is born.

Happiness, however, is not something that fate holds in store for the family. Lev charges off to war with fire in his eyes, commitment in his heart and great words on his lips. He dies swiftly and senselessly with all of them still in place. Thus begins Varvara’s real-life journey, an existence filled with deep-rooted sorrow but tempered with her desire to do good. Her maid Olga (Olga Kalashnikova) and her childhood friend Marya Nikolayevna (Anastasia Imamova) do their best to ease her burdens, but they are only partially successful.

In Zhenovach’s vision of Varvara’s life, the past remains a living part of the present. At key moments, the dashing Lev returns to visit his wife silently as if he had never been away. In a particularly effective stop-action scene, Lev passes through with nothing more than a silent embrace when Varvara begins to entertain the notion of remarrying. It is impossible to say whether he is grieved or accepting of what is happening.

Varvara has a way of finding people through whom and for whom she can manifest her goodness. Petro Graivorona (Alexander Oblasov), a drunken Ukrainian army bugler who claims he “never saw a good man” in his life, becomes a kind of family member when Varvara takes pity on him and takes him under her wing. The eccentric Dorimedont Rogozhin (Alexei Vertkov) — whom everyone calls Don Quixote — enjoys her patronage despite his blustery and often strange ways. Varvara’s tendency to be trusting does not always bring her joy. When she falls under the influence of the seemingly holy-minded Mefody Chervev (Sergei Abroskin), she finds that he undermines almost everything she has believed throughout her entire life.

The biggest trial Varvara faces after the death of her husband is the raising of her daughter. Anastasia (Tatyana Volkova) is more a daughter of the age in which she matures than of her mother. In Varvara’s eyes, Anastasia is frivolous and unprincipled. Anastasia, meanwhile, considers her mother an unbearable bore. To make matters worse, Anastasia ends up marrying Count Funkendorf (Grigory Sluzhitel), a wife-seeking man who first entered the family’s good graces by courting Varvara. Although Varvara finds it in herself to endure this unexpected turn of events and even demonstrates that she holds no grudges by financing a European trip for the couple, nothing is ever quite the same again. She begins referring to Anastasia as her “unloved” daughter, and her desire to give her daughter everything she possibly can looks more like spite than anything else. While continuing to uphold her reputation in the family as a “saint,” Varvara’s inner world begins crumbling little by little.

In her performance of Varvara, Shashlova seeks to express an array of nuances in the mood of sorrow. Often teary-eyed or distressed, this Varvara is unquestionably resilient. Shashlova impresses with her ability to work sensitively in such a limited emotional range, although in a show that runs nearly four hours a sense of monotony does occasionally set in.

Comic relief is offered by Kalashnikova’s perky Olga, Vertkov’s often manic but always passionate Rogozhin, and by Oblasov, who, in addition to playing the eternally inebriated Petro Graivorona, doubles as Rogozhin’s earthy sidekick Zinka.

Zhenovach, as ever, is attuned to the subtleties of the quirks, deeds and mannerisms that make human behavior and interaction worthy of observation. People themselves, not so much history or society, are what interest him, and he encourages his young cast to create detailed human portraits. In the scenes involving Varvara’s husband eagerly going off to war and dying in an instant, we hear the distinct echoes of social, if not political, commentary. But this is relatively rare in “A Family in Decline.” For the most part, Zhenovach offers us a look at men and women who live their lives more or less successfully and struggle with the same basic problems that everyone before or since them has had to confront.