Whatever little criticisms I may apply to it, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a Tony Award-winning “Best New Play” in a handsome co-production by two top regional theaters, Cleveland Playhouse and Geva Theatre Center. It has an attractive, able cast, directed by a master of stage hilarity. So it is pretty much guaranteed to provide a laugh-filled, enjoyable evening.
Starting as a young actor in the founding original cast of Geva Theater, which ends its 42nd season with this production, Bruce Jordan has since directed hit comedies all over. Most notably, he decided to adapt into a comedy an old, odd German play at Geva and, with his producing partner, Bruce, turned it into the blockbuster Shear Madness, the longest-running play in American theater history. Unsurprisingly, he keeps Christopher Durang’s faux-Chekhov romp zinging along, enchanting the audience and getting constant laughs. But this is also a comedy surprisingly suggesting familiar family problems with affectionate concern and buoyant wit, hardly as brilliantly as the Chekhov models Durang plays with, but with a feel-good resolve that Jordan emphasizes.
The two Chekhov models most played with here are Three Sisters and The Seagull; and Durang wrote the role of Vanya for himself, only slightly making use of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. But Vanya’s sister, Masha, is a movie star who sends money and supports her brother and sister in this country house that she seldom visits. Her name is Masha, but her role is more that of the actress Arkadina in The Seagull than Masha in Three Sisters. And Vanya is an intellectual outsider, but when he annoys his sister and family with a nonsensical, tedious play he wrote, he is more like Arkadina’s son than Uncle Vanya. Does that sound pedantic? Good! That, I think, is the right tone for discussion of that part of this play.
Margaret Reed has actually played Masha in Three Sisters, but Durang wrote the role for his longtime best friend Sigourney Weaver, who has to only walk onto a stage to command attention. Ms. Reed is an experienced actress beautiful enough to be a movie star, but she does not take command. A friend remarked that she is playing the role well but never becomes the role.
John Scherer’s Vanya is wryly funny but takes charge only in the long showy rant that Vanya stuns everyone with, exploding at Spike’s mocking response to Vanya’s innocent comment about “licking stamps.” I suppose that, until that moment, Vanya is too depressed and resentful to assert himself.
The voodoo-obsessed maid, Cassandra, seems a creation out of control until her eventual revelations pretty much justify Danielle Lee Greaves’s entirely over-the-top performance. Maren Bush’s pretty, young, blonde Nina is an appealingly stereotypical ingénue. Toni DiBuono has occasional moments that suggest a dynamic comic actress, but her sadly funny character as Sonia pretty much demands subtler delivery; and, indeed, she is the most persuasively real person onstage.
Sexily muscular young Gregory Isaac Stone, who spends much of the play wearing only briefs, looks less strong and athletic than exactly what he is playing so amusingly – Masha’s boy toy.
Mimi Maxmen’s witty costumes suggest a stronger inclination to amuse than impress. Ann G. Wrightson’s really complex lighting designs are dramatically effective but also make sure to illuminate Bill Clarke’s incredibly detailed set – a multiply faced and divided beautiful farmhouse with visible internal and external areas, and filled with enough characterizing possessions and decorations to take days to itemize. Great-looking production!
