Full Length Plays
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play.
The play was written on commission from the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey, and then it became a co-production of the McCarter and The Lincoln Center Theater in New York City.
The play premiered at the McCarter in early September 2012 and played until October 14, and then the same production (including director Nicholas Martin and the cast) moved to Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater. The play began previews on October 25, opened on November 12, and has recently been extended until January 20, 2013.
Cast
David Hyde Pierce as Vanya, Kristine Nielsen as Sonia, Sigourney Weaver as Masha, Billy Magnussen as Spike, Shalita Grant as Cassandra, and Genevieve Angelson as Nina.
The play is set in the present day in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in a farm house Vanya and his step-sister Sonia have lived in all their lives. They jointly took care of their ailing, doddering parents for many years while their movie star sister Masha was gallivanting around the world, having a life. The play takes place on a weekend when Masha shows up with a new twenty something boy toy named Spike.
Vanya, Masha and Sonia were named after Chekhov characters by their college professor parents. And the play, which is a mix of comedy and drama, takes Chekhovian characters and themes, mixes them up and puts them in a blender.
The play has been directed by Nicholas Martin, who also directed the premieres of two other Durang plays, Betty’s Summer Vacation at Playwrights Horizons Theatre, winning him a directing Obie award, and the critically acclaimed Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them at the Public Theatre.
This trailer from the McCarter Theater production
Deliriously funny! Comic acting raised to the level of high art. . . . The theater erupts in booming gusts of laughter that practically shake the seats!”
—The New York Times
The book, published by Grove Atlantic, is now available www.groveatlantic.com