STAGE WEST: "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike" at Cygnet Theatre

Shana Wride and Andrew Oswald as siblings in misery.                                      Karli Cadel Photography

            Christopher Durang may not have intended “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” to be a deconstruction of Chekhovian characters but that’s certainly one way to regard his inimitable absurdist comedy. As with so many of his Russian literary comrades, Anton Chekhov’s characters can be (and frequently are) brooding, morose, self-flagellating, prone to disillusionment and depression. Just maybe Durang imagined “What would happen if these people not only snapped out of it but let it all out, went a little nutso?”
            Make that happen and you have “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which I’ve seen three times now and just the other night in Cygnet Theatre’s brand-new intimate space The Dottie. It may be recency bias on my part, but this “Vanya and Sonia …” outshines even those I saw previously at Scripps Ranch Theatre and before that the Old Globe. It’s a delightful debut for The Dottie Studio, a production directed with high style by Anthony Methvin and featuring two of the finest performances of the year in Andrew Oswald as Vanya and Shana Wride as his adopted sister Sonia.
            The question that always surrounds this play is “Do I need to know the works and characters of Chekhov in order to ‘get it’”?
            No, though it’s more fun if you recognize some of the references to plays including “The Three Sisters,” “The Cherry Orchard” and “The Seagull.” The Chekhovian easter eggs are not dropped subtly in “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” so it doesn’t require an academic to connect with them. On the other hand, those who’ve never read a word of Chekhov will easily get into and appreciate a dysfunctional family story that at times feels like it’s been channeled through Samuel Beckett … or “The Twilight Zone.”
            Yi-Chien Lee’s peaceful, pastoral set evokes the beautifully sleepy environs of a country home in Bucks County, Penn. where outside of blue herons settling on a nearby pond not much happens. It’s here that Vanya and Sonia reside in a perpetual state of ennui, and in Sonia’s case, gloom. Their opening argument over the temperature of the morning coffee is about as lively as it gets in this joint.
            Things liven up considerably with the unexpected arrival of their gadabouting and completely self-absorbed sibling Masha (Eileen Bowman), she who’s been paying the bills to support a household where its current residents don’t work (and yet somehow employ a housekeeper who claims to have psychic powers). Accompanying Masha is a boy-toy wannabe TV “actor” who calls himself Spike (Sean Brew – a perfect fraternal brother name, no?) and who is prone to strut about in his underwear or at the very least sans shirt. This is uncomfortably and most attentively noted by Vanya, who is a closeted gay man.
            What happens isn’t the grist of weighty Russia novels (the prolific Chekhov wrote only one, “The Shooting Party,” but a slew of novellas and novelettes): Much fuss and furor swirls around a costume party at the former home of Dorothy Parker to which Masha has been invited – who’s going, who will wear what, et al; and the B-film star’s announcement at the end of Act One that she intends to sell the ancestral home.
            By the way, the reason for the Chekhovian names of these characters is explained early on, that the since-dead parents, both professors, had named their children after figures in the august writer’s plays.
            Meanwhile, it’s not enough that the self-deprecating Sonia is fiercely jealous of Masha, that Masha is tactless and egotistical to a prodigious degree, that Vanya is frustratingly world-weary and ever in the middle between the two, and that Spike is … well, Spike. Durang also utilizes the Cassandra housekeeper character (Daisy Martinez) for over-the-top antics and wise-ass remarks, then soon injects an innocent ingenue, Nina ( Emma Nossal) into the proceedings. It all gets very much on the verge of out-of-control comedy. It’s the poignancy of Sonia’s overriding loneliness and perception of a life unlived, and the suppressed urge to speak up and speak out inside Vanya that unearth the depth inherent in Durang’s play.
            The two most urgent and most affecting monologues of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” arrive, naturally, in the second act:
 Sonia gets a phone call from a man she met but barely remembered at the costume party, asking her for a date. The audience, yours truly included, are with her every awkward second on the phone. Will she accept? Does she believe this is really happening to her? Wride’s performance here is understated and heart-rending.
            Then there’s Vanya’s eruption in the middle of a strange performance of a play he’s writing about world-ending climate change. Discovering Spike has been texting during, Vanya goes off, deriding the shallow excesses of the present and aching for the lost simplicities of a past gone forever. Masterfully, Oswald will bring tears to your eyes.
            Bowman, in the meantime, is in her comic element as Masha, one of those roles she seems born to play. Fittingly, her costume-party persona is Snow White – it was Bowman, dressed as Snow White, who performed with Rob Lowe in that shuddering skit at the 1989 Oscars. It must be cathartic for her to be playing that part for laughs today.
             Three times is probably enough “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” for me, and if it is I can revel in the fact that I enjoyed this one completely. The new Dottie is a nice companion to Cygnet’s larger Clayes Theater where “Follies” wraps up on Sunday. Its seat numbers are a little hard to identify and you’re close to your neighbors, but it was comfortable enough for a show (“Vanya and Sonia”) that runs two and a half hours, with intermission.
           “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” runs through Nov. 9 in Cygnet’s Dottie Studio Theater in Liberty Station, Point Loma.