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Anthony Methvin is the director of Cygnet Theatre\u2019s \u201cVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.\u201d (Cygnet Theatre)<\/p>\nA family dress-up in \u201cSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs\u201d costumes inside a staid country farmhouse is just one of the absurdities in Christopher Durang\u2019s \u201cVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.\u201d Another is the aforementioned Sonia\u00a0 impersonates actress Maggie Smith one minute and a wild turkey the next.<\/p>\n
Throw in more than a few Anton Chekhov easter eggs and it\u2019s no wonder that \u201cVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike\u201d is playwright Durang\u2019s most honored work.<\/p>\n
It won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2013 and continues to be widely produced. In San Diego alone, it\u2019s been staged by the Old Globe (its local premiere) in 2014, by Scripps Ranch Theatre in 2016 and just two years ago by La Mesa-based Lamplighters Community Theatre.<\/p>\n
Anthony Methvin is the director of Cygnet Theatre\u2019s \u201cVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.\u201d (Cygnet Theatre)<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason that people do it so often is it is Durang\u2019s most human play and it has the most grace,\u201d said Anthony Methvin, who\u2019s directing Cygnet Theatre\u2019s production of \u201cVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike\u201d in its brand-new Dottie Studio Theater at The Joan in Arts District Liberty Station. \u201cThe absurdist touches are all there, too. It\u2019s completely wackadoo.\u201d<\/p>\n
Durang\u2019s comedy exploits the dysfunctional relationship between three middle-aged siblings in pastoral Bucks County, Penn. The family home is shared by brother and sister Vanya and Sonia (Andrew Oswald and Shana Wride at Cygnet) whose quiet and depressive day-to-day is roiled by the arrival of absent sister Masha (Eileen Bowman), a faded film star who\u2019s been supporting them and who reveals her desire to sell the house. Adding to the ensuing comic tension is the presence of the boy-toy companion Spike (Sean Brew) whom Masha has brought with her and who takes his shirt off more times than Mark Wahlberg.<\/p>\n
Excepting Spike, all the titular characters\u2019 names can be found in Chekhovian works, and though scholars will identify reminders of \u201cThe Seagull,\u201d \u201cThe Cherry Orchard\u201d and \u201cThree Sisters,\u201d Durang himself has scoffed at the suggestion that \u201cVanya and Sonia \u2026\u201d is a Chekhov parody.<\/p>\n
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The four principal cast members in Cygnet Theatre\u2019s \u201cVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,\u201d left to right, are Andrew Oswald (Vanya), Shana Wride (Sonia), Eileen Bowman (Masha) and Sean Brew (Spike). (Karli Cadel)<\/p>\n
\u201cHe (Durang) pulls at those threads of longing and nostalgia and family relationships and tells them through his own, very \u2018Durangian\u2019 perspective,\u201d said Methvin. \u201cThere\u2019s always this sense of melancholy, but up against it this sense of the absurd, and that\u2019s where the humor is derived.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cygnet\u2019s Dottie Theater-opening \u201cVanya and Sonia \u2026\u201d is a Durangian reunion for Oswald. A decade ago, he directed a production of the playwright\u2019s \u201cBaby with the Bathwater\u201d at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights, the cast of which included his current co-star, Wride.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love this piece (\u2018Vanya and Sonia \u2026\u201d),\u201d said Oswald, who last appeared at Cygnet in 2015 in \u201cThe Whale,\u201d which Wride directed. \u201cIt has an optimism that Durang\u2019s work doesn\u2019t always have, and a realism to it. Yet it\u2019s still Durang \u2014 crazy moments that would not happen in real life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Its craziness aside, Durang\u2019s play does find its characters looking inside themselves, possibly for the first real time, and daring to change.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the beautiful things about this play,\u201d said Oswald, \u201cis that each of the three sibling characters opens up to what the world could be, particularly my character (Vanya, a closeted gay man). He and his sister are leading a very resigned life of almost Beckett-like sadness and grasping at what small bits of hope and happiness they can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Director Methvin circles back to his observation of the play being Durang\u2019s most human work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re meeting these characters at inflection points in their lives,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery one of them is forced to look at the person they\u2019ve been and forced to look at the person they\u2019re going to become on the other side of these couple of days in the story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Added Oswald: \u201cIt\u2019s just a really funny play about how we move past the obstacles.\u201d<\/p>\n
The play\u2019s cast also include Daisy Martinez as the fortunetelling housekeeper Cassandra and Emma Nossal as the young actress-neighbor Nina.<\/p>\n
The inaugural production in the new Dottie Studio Theater also marks Methvin\u2019s first directing assignment at Cygnet, where previously he assistant-directed \u201cDogfight\u201d in 2015 and performed in the cast of \u201cMonty Python\u2019s Spamalot\u201d in 2018.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be welcomed in and to be trusted with the first show in the Dottie is special to me,\u201d said Methvin, who is producing director of Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company. He calls his principal cast members (Oswald, Wride and Bowman) \u201cpeople that I have the utmost respect for as artists, as directors, as mentors and as people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Methvin also sees \u201ca lovely kind of parallel\u201d between Cygnet simultaneously staging \u201cVanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike\u201d in the Dottie and the Stephen Sondheim\/James Goldman musical \u201cFollies\u201d in the larger Joseph Clayes III Theater at The Joan. \u201cBoth have these casts that are San Diego royalty standing side by side with up-and-comers. There\u2019s a lot about looking back vs. looking forward in both.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oswald considers himself \u201chonored to be a part of\u201d the launch of the Dottie Theater. \u201cI could not be happier with it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s exciting to be the first show. We\u2019ll be the first set of ghosts to haunt this space.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike\u2019<\/p>\n
When:<\/strong> Previews, Wednesday through Oct. 10. Opens Oct. 11 and runs through Nov. 9. 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays<\/p>\n