At Shakespeare & Company, as envisioned by feminist theorists Carol Gilligan and Tina Packer, The Scarlet Letter is more blush than red. Psychologist and educator Gilligan’s adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great 1850 romance has its seeds in her recently published book The Birth of Pleasure, which cites the novel as an example of the patriarchal impetus to associate love not with joy but with tragedy. Certainly The Scarlet Letter, with its tale of a woman condemned and labeled by Puritan society for her " lawless passion, " lends itself to such a reading. Moreover, Hawthorne’s evocation of Hester Prynne as a sort of prophetess predicting a future in which " a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness " aligns with Gilligan’s vision built on the myth of Psyche and Cupid. Indeed, the production’s Hester Prynne and daughter Pearl are presented as lush embodiments of a more natural world outside the " iron framework " of Puritanism. But the men of the production are so feeble, and the whole staging is so devoid of fever, that Hawthorne’s vision pales.

Shakespeare & Company has successfully transferred a number of novels, including Edith Wharton’s Berkshires-set Ethan Frome and Summer, to the stage, so the failure is puzzling. This Scarlet Letter seems hesitant, as if it lacked the courage of its romantic and theoretic convictions. Gilligan’s adaptation, her first work for the stage, is rather straightforward, reproducing much of Hawthorne’s dialogue if not the novel’s rapt narrative voice. The only thing she tampers with is the book’s Conclusion, with its hearkening toward " The angel and apostle of the coming revelation " who must be a woman but cannot be sin-stained Hester Prynne. Here the role falls to Pearl, a 20th-century version of whom, living in Italy with a handsome Dimmesdale of her own (and teaching comparative literature), delivers an abbreviated version of the book’s final chapter as an epilogue,

But Packer’s production paints a Puritan settlement that, bathed in church music and bordered by a dappled-fabric forest, seems less harsh and adamant than it should. The entire male-dominated Establishment, as represented by Jonathan Croy’s smug Governor Bellingham and Dave Demke’s clueless Reverend Wilson, dodders. But what most robs the story of its tragic inevitability is the creative team’s ambivalence about it. Gilligan and Packer maintain, in a program note, that the story " could have ended happily — if love had been honored over all other commitments. " In 17th-century Puritan Boston? On the other hand, Packer, streamlining the play almost as if it were a classical tragedy, uses a trio of " Goodwives " as a Chorus. And choreographer Susan Dibble supplies them (and the male Puritan cadre of preachers and politicians) with some stylized movement, formal and angular, that nicely bespeaks repression.

But just as repression is only suggested, the passions underlying The Scarlet Letter are tepid. Jennie Israel is a serene, abundant Hester, her " A " an ornate patch pinned to a gray but thickly sensuous gown. And she certainly gives the most assured performance. But her Hester never seems to suffer, even on the scaffold. In fact, she and little Pearl, too cutely played by adult actress Kate Holland, her free-spiritedness almost goofy, appear as happy as clams, going about their sickbed tending and forest frolicking.

As for the burlap-clad Chillingworth of Michael Hammond, he’s almost reasonable, not increasingly twisted and diabolical, as Hawthorne paints him in the throes of revenge. And Jason Asprey’s Dimmesdale, perhaps because Gilligan and Packer are determined to underline his weakness, is a pale shadow of a sufferer, for the most part as unsure as a toddler and as limp as a fish. Whether nervously maintaining his holy demeanor or crawling in the shadow of the scaffold flagellating himself, he seems more a disheveled baby than a soul in torment. Even his apparently pre- and post-coital forest love scene with Hester lacks heat. Packer’s staging preserves the ambiguity of the novel with regard to the letter ostensibly wrought, from the inside out, on Dimmesdale’s chest. But given the usually reliable Asprey’s performance, his " A, " if he had one, would stand for " anemic. "