Their tales reveal ambition, betrayal, silence

The answers to those what-ifs form the spine of “Collected Stories,’’ a tightly constructed drama by Donald Margulies that is now at New Repertory Theatre under the direction of Bridget Kathleen O’Leary. “Collected Stories’’ maps the shifting terrain of literary friendship, ambition, and betrayal in a fashion that is less “All About Eve’’ villain-and-victim than a simple illustration of Joan Didion’s famous observation that “writers are always selling somebody out.’’

What makes the New Rep production so engrossing is that when all is said, done, and written, both women have paid a steep emotional price.

The first time we see Ruth, played by Bobbie Steinbach, it is 1990, and she is pecking away at a typewriter in the Greenwich Village apartment where she has lived for three decades. Jazz fills the air, and it is coming from - oh blessed sight! - a record player. Ruth’s cozy but cluttered apartment, designed by Jenna McFarland Lord, reflects the sensibility of an occupant who spends more time polishing sentences than furniture. Evidence of a word-driven life abounds, from the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf crammed with volumes to the pile of books stacked near an armchair to the still more books scattered beneath a coffee table.

Into this lit lair stumbles, quite literally, Lisa, a grad student played by Liz Hayes. She has arrived for a tutorial with Ruth, who is not just Lisa’s writing teacher but, as becomes apparent from the student’s flustered demeanor, her idol as well. Ruth has earned a substantial reputation for her uncanny ability to create fiction that dramatizes the inner lives of ordinary people. However, her renown rests entirely on her short stories; she has never produced a novel, a fact that will later rear its pointed head during a confrontation.