by Michael Sommers
view review on NYTimes.com
It is not essential to know the Russian plays of Anton Chekhov to like the all-American charms of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” Christopher Durang’s amiable comedy about a wacky weekend spent in Bucks County with three middle-aged siblings and a boy toy.
Such knowledge lends extra fun to the proceedings, but Mr. Durang’s contemporary story and his quirky characters are sufficiently humorous to make the current production in Millburn at Paper Mill Playhouse a mostly pleasing diversion.
A mash-up of elements from Chekhov’s most popular works, the play rambles along in a Pennsylvania country house where Vanya (Mark Nelson) and his adopted sister Sonia (Michele Pawk) have been rusticating for years in fondly squabbling harmony.
Then their sibling Masha (Carolyn McCormick), an egocentric movie star, makes a rare visit. With her is the hunky Spike (Philippe Bowgen), her vacuous younger lover.
Masha announces that she is taking everyone to a costume party being held at a nearby estate — and, incidentally, that she plans to sell their ancestral home, which she subsidizes.
In the second-act aftermath of the party — where to Masha’s chagrin the repressed Sonia evidently has made a hit by imitating the British actress Maggie Smith at her wryest — the family conflict is resolved. Others involved are Cassandra (Gina Daniels), a doom-predicting housekeeper, and Nina (Jamie Ann Romero), a young neighbor who recalls the same-named soul from “The Seagull.”
The latest among Mr. Durang’s 20-plus plays, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” is not as audacious as “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You” or as trenchant as “Betty’s Summer Vacation” or as touching as “The Marriage of Bette and Boo,” but it really is the most charming of them all, composed in a genial mood and laced with easygoing laughter and the occasional expletive.
This leisurely tale about 50-somethings who perceive that life is passing them by also possesses a poignant undercurrent that bolsters the comedy.
Commissioned by the McCarter Theater Center, where it had its premiere in Princeton in 2012, the play moved to Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Off Broadway space and subsequently landed on Broadway. It won the 2013 Tony Award among other prizes, enjoyed a profitable run and has since become one of the most produced new works on the regional theater scene.
Paper Mill’s solid production features David Korins’s beautiful original setting, which depicts the house as a mellow vision of weathered fieldstone, timbers and wicker furniture. It is a pity that the set could not be expanded beyond the proscenium into the theater, since Paper Mill’s barnlike auditorium is no friend to intimate storytelling.
The able sound amplification of the space permits the actors to project their characters without strain, however, and Don Stephenson, the director, stages the action smoothly.
Mr. Nelson’s mild-mannered Vanya, with his scraggly gray beard and professorial features, drolly resembles a cross between Mr. Durang and Stephen Sondheim. The anxiety that lurks within Vanya seeps through in Mr. Nelson’s nasal intonations and finally bursts forth in a serio-comic harangue about the pleasantries of 1950s culture versus today’s disconnected distractions, all delivered with a sort of noble despair.
The melancholy Sonia, initially played by Ms. Pawk as sadly withdrawn, is prone to calling herself a “wild turkey” (another comedic nod to “The Seagull”). She then brightens up delightfully as she evolves into a peacock by donning a fancy frock and Dame Maggie accents to match. In another moment of the play, when Sonia fields a phone call from an unexpected admirer, it is touching to watch Ms. Pawk become pigeon-toed with happiness.
Looking suitably glamorous as the preening Masha, Ms. McCormick grandly flings her arms and long legs around in animal prints until she is undone by a Snow White costume. Ms. McCormick’s increasingly disgruntled airs as a grumpy diva are fun to observe.
Mr. Bowgen’s nicely chiseled Spike bounces about with bro-type spirit. Ms. Daniel’s Cassandra is at her sharpest during a voodoo bit while Ms. Romero appears sweetly star-struck as Nina. Leon Dobkowski, the costume designer, dresses mostly everyone in vibrant colors that lend visual energy to the show.
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