REVIEW: Literary mash-up a farce to be reckoned with at the Varscona Theatre
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a 2012 comedy written by Christopher Durang. His playful sense of humour can be seen in such hits as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Beyond Therapy and The Idiot Karamazov. He also has written serious plays on child abuse, Roman Catholic dogma and homosexuality.
Durang attended the Yale Drama school in the ’70s, where he found a lifelong friend and muse in Sigourney Weaver (Ripley – for you Alien fans). A few years back, the two got together and decided to recreate those good ‘ol Yale days and devise something they could collaborate on. The result was Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, a clever, lively and very funny comedy. Starring Weaver, it was a big hit and won a Tony for Outstanding New Play in 2013.
Durang’s unmoored comedy of manners is the current production from Shadow Theatre in the Varscona Theatre until May 19.
The playwright’s recipe is to take Chekhov’s major plays, stir in a bit of Euripides, add a soupcon of Disney and serve it up as a whimsical blue plate special. Half the fun is to play “name-that-reference” as the various literary mashups go rushing by.
Knowledge of arcane theatrical trivia is not necessary – nor is knowing Chekhov’s oeuvre. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is broadly, at points even cartoonishly funny. Think of it as a sitcom with higher ambitions. For a while the motivation is familiar to any student of the conventions of 19th Century Russian angst, longing and self-pity – but then the playwright takes over and it goes in all sorts of Durangian directions.
Vanya (John Sproule) and Sonia (Coralie Cairns) have spent the better part of their lives looking after a renovated Pennsylvania farmhouse (located near a cherry orchard). The remarkably detailed lived-in set (by Daniel vanHeyst) looks as if you could move in tomorrow. The very apt costumes are from Leona Brausen.
The two siblings are chafing at what they see as their wasted years. All that is changed when their glamourous but fading movie star sister Masha (Davina Stewart) explodes upon the scene with her latest boneheaded boy-toy, Spike (Jamie Cavanagh). Masha, who owns the estate, wants to sell it. Next door lives the nymphette Nina (an appealing Rachel Bowron) who dreams of becoming an actress. The cleaning lady Cassandra (Michelle Todd) seems to have blundered into the play from a production of The Trojan Women next door. She of course has the ability to see the future – but no one pays any attention to her. Todd is something of a force of nature, charging about the stage loudly proclaiming, “Death and Destruction!”
There is of course a grand ball. In this version it’s a Disney-themed costume party, after which Vanya delivers a fierce and rangy rant which includes an attack on social media, Davey Crockett hats, Ozzie and Harriet, The Ed Sullivan Show, the sensual delights of licking stamps, and our present-day loss of personal communication. It’s really the climax of the play and Sproule’s cantankerous and heartfelt tirade turned out to be a highlight in the hands of this accomplished actor. The audience burst into applause when he finally wound down.
Cairns also gets a great set piece in that old comic expedient – the phone call – where all you can see and hear is one person and in the hands of this fine performer, that’s enough. Cairns begins with a whine but as the party begins, she switches to command the evening with a perfectly acceptable Maggie Smith accent. A stunning turnaround.
Cavanagh plays a simpleton would-be actor with the body of a Greek God. The script doesn’t give him much more beyond that, but he is outrageously funny in a scene where in a reverse male-stripper routine, he demonstrates moves that Channing Tatum would have been proud of in Magic Mike.
Much of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike may be a giddy farce but with a cast like this (under the light-handed direction of John Hudson), the playwright manages to add more than a little heart as a dysfunctional family finds itself.
Photos by Marc J. Chalifoux
