With or without a dead body turning up, nothing in literature quite stirs conflict like a crowded weekend in the country. Sondheim knew it, and even wrote a song about it. Agatha Christie knew it. And so did Anton Chekhov, whose works served as inspiration for Christopher Durang’s hilarious Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which took home a Tony for Best Play for its original 2013 Broadway production.
Durang borrowed names and themes from Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Seagull, among others, to construct his witty, occasionally absurdist tale of three very grown siblings at odds, ostensibly over the potential sale of a country house, but really over all the differences, both petty and profound, that have divided them throughout the years.
Clashing personalities and festering resentments promise a turbulent weekend for them, but, for the audience, an entertaining evening of quips and bickering played to the hilt by director Vincent M. Lancisi’s winning cast, led by three veteran Everyman company members as the play’s three siblings.
Bruce Randolph Nelson is Vanya, and Megan Anderson is Sonia, a brother and sister who reside in the cozy Bucks County farmhouse owned by their sister Masha (Beth Hylton). The acting trio’s shared experience of more than 35 productions at Everyman, many of which they performed together in some combination, shows in their complex rapport as a fictional family.
Anderson and Hylton, in particular, find a sisterly likeness in two very different women spinning out at opposite ends of the life-experience spectrum.
Sonia has shared the house with brother Vanya for ages, first with their parents, whom they cared for until their deaths. Now, eccentric sister and brother live together alone, whiling away their days sitting on the porch waiting for the blue heron to return to their pond.
Cracking up, to the point that she’s impulsively smashing dishes, Sonia wishes she had more. “I haven’t lived!” Through the desperation portrayed by Anderson, or the charming glow of hope that dawns over her when Sonia thinks she might have met someone, Sonia’s laments feel legitimate.
Masha, on the other hand, has lived large, as a successful actress who lucked into global celebrity starring in the Sexy Killer film franchise. But the gut-punch of another divorce, her fifth, has her worried the tides have turned inexorably against her. “My life is over!” she cries.
Layering this self-aggrandizing diva with just enough self-awareness to be tolerable to those around her, and a total hoot onstage, Hylton makes Masha both insufferably selfish, and not always wrong about her stuck-at-home sister.
Falling somewhere between them, in temperament and tendency towards anxiety-fueled outbursts, Vanya finds a way to get along with both sisters. Accordingly, Nelson produces a fizzy, funny rapport with whichever sister is sharing the scene, when he’s not just stealing scenes with sparklingly dry delivery and Vanya’s quiet but clear hankering for Masha’s strapping, much younger beau, Spike (Alex Benoit).
Making his Everyman debut, Benoit is formidably fit for the role of the dim hunk who happily bounds around in his briefs, though he’s not entirely convincing at being as dumb as Spike is written to be. (That could be a compliment.) Yet, he makes Spike compelling, which is less the case with Shubhangi Kuchibhotla’s Nina, the niece of next-door neighbors.
Like Spike, a young, nubile interloper in the house — a brilliantly realized fairytale cottage, care of scenic designer Dan Conway — Nina arouses desire and jealousy just by her mere presence during this weekend of midlife crisis crashouts.
The sisters are warned, though. Vanya and Sonia’s cleaning lady, Cassandra (Chinai Routté) sees visions of the future, but her prophecies and warnings go unheeded.
As written, and per Routté’s appealing performance, the character offers a clever spin on the Cassandra myth, even if the story device of a voodoo-practicing Caribbean housekeeper seems dated, calling to mind, for one, Nell Carter’s oddball sorceress maid in the ’80s comedy Modern Problems.
But good comedy transcends, and this company keeps the laughs rolling from start to finish. The play’s long weekend flies by, a lot quicker and livelier than an afternoon spent on the porch waiting for the blue heron to return to the pond.
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (★★★★☆) runs through April 19 at Everyman Theatre, 315 W. Fayette Street, in Baltimore, Md. Tickets are $53 to $115, with Pay-What-You-Choose seats available for every performance. Call 410-752-2208, or visit everymantheatre.org.
The second half of the theater season always feels like the downhill rush of a roller coaster, a new hill coming into view just as you hit the dip, as local venues begin the time-honored ritual of announcing their upcoming seasons. Still, our focus here is on what's about to bloom -- and this year, that bloom is as big and bold as it gets.
A highlight is Shakespeare Theatre Company, showcasing Hamnet (no, not the movie), Suzy Eddie Izzard in a tour-de-force one-person Hamlet, and the great Wendell Pierce in the title role of Othello. (Pierce joins a notable Othello lineage at STC -- including, for those who remember, Patrick Stewart and Avery Brooks.)
What a hullabaloo. There was the book, then the play, and now there is the movie (with an Oscar-winning performance). Hamnet is, as the iconic VISA ad said, everywhere you want to be.
People, it seems, just can't get enough of this Shakespeare-adjacent imagining of the Bard's family life. And the airwaves are veritably humming with the question of what one should read, see, or experience live, first. The truth is, anyone who feels they need to catch the Hamnet wave should be able to start anywhere. Book, film, or play -- each should be capable of standing on its own two feet. Unfortunately, the production by the Royal Shakespeare Company, now at The Shakespeare Theatre, is less standing than crawling around on its knees.
A story told in fragments of past and present, Rachel Bonds' unflinching drama Jonah guards its mysteries closely. The play's fractured narrative, prone to misdirection, coalesces at a careful pace before the pieces, like shards of memory, assemble into a complete picture.
Studio Theatre's production, directed by Taylor Reynolds (Studio's triumphant Fat Ham), handily juggles the complicated plot while maintaining a quietly tense atmosphere. The foreboding mood persists even in the lighter moments between introspective teen Ana (Ismenia Mendes) and the boy she allows to sneak in through her dorm window, Jonah (Rohan Maletira).
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