No longer the enfant terrible who wrote Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You and caused a scandal on the St. Louis theatre scene a couple of decades ago, Christopher Durang has mellowed with age (a little) and now finds inspiration not in the nuns of his Catholic education but in the gentle sadness and comic pathos of the great Russian master Anton Chekhov. But if your laughter at the absurdities of Durang’s characters is now mixed with pity and affection, you still laugh a lot at his play currently at the Kirkwood Theatre Guild. It’s called Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Those are the names of four of the characters in the play, and three of them are also names of characters in plays by Chekhov. If you’re familiar with Chekhov’s plays, you’ll get an extra layer of fun enjoying the ways Durang uses and misuses the Chekhov originals. But you don’t need to know Chekhov to enjoy this play. 

Vanya and Sonya and Masha are siblings. Their parents were professors who loved Chekhov. Hence the names. Vanya and Sonya still live in the house where they grew up, a rambling old place in rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, not unlike those estates in the Russian countryside in Chekhov’s plays. They even have a few cherry trees. The imaginative set by Kent Coffel and Stephanie Robinson makes striking use of several symmetrically decorated tall panels to encircle the playing area and create this house. 

Vanya and Sonya have stayed there to care for their aging parents, who have now died. Never leaving their childhood home, the siblings have in a sense never had a chance to grow up. 

The parents left the house to sister Masha. She’s a movie star, maybe almost A list, also maybe fading. She’s done well enough to pay for the expenses at home while her brother and sister look after things there. She swoops in for a visit to go to a costume party that an influential neighbor is giving. She brings with her her latest boy toy, Spike. Costume designer Cherol Bowman Thibaut provides the party attire and the contrasting daily wear, dull for Vanya and Sonia, always glamorous for Masha. Masha has decreed that they’ll go as characters from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with herself as Snow White, the others preferably as dwarfs. Spike is always happy to wear as little as possible to show off his very buff body, bounding about like a large puppy in Mason Ramsey’s performance. 

Masha inherited all of their parents’ flair for the theatre, leaving none for her rather gray siblings, and Deborah Dennert flourishes all Masha’s colors, in full display whether she is up or she is down. 

Vanya mostly sits rather quietly, making observations laced with that reputedly gay sense of humor that Durang has displayed more flamboyantly on other occasions. Ken Lopinot settles like a Buddha on the couch, but he unleashes the character’s pent up unhappiness and anger in a climactic speech that’s filled with nostalgia for his childhood 1950s of Howdy Doody and Ed Sullivan and with dismay and even anger for the facebook and texting that fracture social cohesion today. 

Jan Mantovani, always fine and given a chance to expand here, helps us relish the small victories of self-pitying Sonia, forever reminding us that she was adopted and is not really quite a member of the family. We can especially enjoy her triumph over Masha by making her own choice of costume for the party. 

Further enriching the household is its cleaning lady, Cassandra, who brings with her from her home in the West Indies the gift of prophecy, though, like her classical namesake, her prophecies are not believed. Annie Bayer erupts with volcanic force when Cassandra is seized by the spirit and spews forth her hilarious combination of vodoo and classical Greek. This Chekhovian house must of course have a sweet young neighbor named Nina who comes calling and who, in Ali Linderer’s lovely person, innocently creates her own disturbances and blessings. 

Stu Safranski’s lights, John ‘JT’ Taylor’s sound, and Mariam Whatley’s properties and managing of the stage make their contributions to the great pleasures of this production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which shines with director Rick Duplissie’s affection for both Durang and Chekhov.

—Bob Wilcox

Photo by Dan Donovan
From the left, Mason Ramsey as Spike, Deborah Dennert as Masha, Ken Lopinot as Vanya, and Ali Linderer as Nina.