Dr. Bob and Bill W. have nothing on Dr. Astrov and the title character in the American Repertory Theatre’s rain- and vodka-sloshed Uncle Vanya. In fact, the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous might view Chekhov’s pitiable " Scenes from Country Life " — as played here in a deep, dilapidated bunker buttressed by a chrome bar (complete with bartender), the characters drowning their sorrows to the point of staggering — as a cautionary tale. It’s not exactly the one that Chekhov wrote in 1899, when he aimed to capture both the weakness and the valor of the Russian gentry going down. But Hungarian director János Szász’s production, which is vividly realized and acted if decidedly auteurist, burns with the desperation, both intellectual and sexual, of Chekhov’s characters, who are stranded in time on their fraying provincial patch, in Riccardo Hernandez’s design a bleak tavern/soup kitchen threatened by all sorts of saturation.

Inspired by a 1979 film by Andrei Tarkovsky called The Stalker, Szász’s Uncle Vanya is less an interpretation than an expressionist vision. Chekhov’s play, hanging by a dirty strand from the reality of Russian country life at the turn of the 20th century, seems almost Beckettesque, its populace disheveled hangers-on whose only business (as is said in the play) is to sleep, drink, eat, and be frustrated. In this merciless reading, everything is heightened, from the characters’ drunkenness to their resentments to their sexuality. It’s as if the play had been turned inside out, masking even such surface pleasantness as the samovar and summer weather. As this Vanya wanes its way toward September, a winter wind sounds and the characters appear wrapped up in winding mufflers and blankets.

Yet Chekhov’s structure is adhered to. In the course of four acts, Vanya, the disillusioned caretaker of his late sister’s estate, chafes under the pompous yoke of her widowed husband, the professor Serebriakov, who has retired to the rural outpost with his beautiful, idle young wife. Yelena bewitches not only the depressive Vanya but also the local doctor, Astrov, whose astringency extends to everything but saving the forests. And Vanya’s niece and the professor’s daughter, Sonya, pines for Astrov. Eventually, amid the sloth and sexual tension and speculations about a better tomorrow, ludicrous melodrama breaks out. Or as Marina, the old nurse yearning for a return to routine and dumplings, puts it: the geese cackle for a while and then they stop, leaving Vanya and Sonya to the tedious business of running the farm until Heaven beckons.

But in Szász’s hands, the sad gentility of Chekhov is stripped away and the characters’ interactions and frustrations become tinged with violence. Subtext is translated into action, as when Vanya tips Serebriakov out of his wheelchair or the professor, bidding an ostensibly civil farewell to Astrov, who has all but bedded his wife, throws a drink in his face. The translation, by the late Paul Schmidt, lacks neither pith (Vanya calls Serebriakov a " moldy mackerel with a college degree " ) nor poetry (Vanya’s love for Yelena is a " ray of sun falling into a black hole " ). And the performances, particularly by Thomas Derrah as a dissipated, viciously bereft Vanya and Arliss Howard as a quizzical, sexually dangerous Astrov (in whom there is an odd smack of Fiddler on the Roof), are edgy and strong.

As Yelena, Linda Powell is not so much indolent as voluptuous, particularly in contrast to Phoebe Jonas’s childlike Sonya, who’s so touching in her eager recapitulation of Astrov’s views and her final, faith-embracing coda. Whether or not " mermaid’s blood " pulses in Powell’s mixed-message-sending siren, who looks exotic in her wine-and-black finery, something does. This unusually robust Yelena, sexual charge leaking out of her in physical tasks (at one point she moves a piano) or hysterical laughter, is less hothouse flower than Hedda Gabler.

So much for Chekhov’s gentle, ineffectual souls, then. The mordant humor mined here is more harsh than humane, and that’s not exactly right, though the production, like the play, juggles heartbreak and pained comedy. Some of the directorial overlay seems unnecessary to this fan of Chekhov straight up (do we need to see the obviously suicidal Vanya try to hang himself?). But whatever qualms one may have about superimposing one sensibility on another, there is no doubt that Szász, whose previous ART outings include indelible and forcefully acted (if also presumptuous) productions of Mother Courage and Her Children and Marat/Sade, is a director of daring. It’s hard to imagine Uncle Vanya’s getting a makeover more startling yet of a piece.