Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

by Christopher Durang

seen at the Gladstone Theatre, Ottawa, on 22 May 2016

The play takes themes from several plays by Anton Chekhov and blends them into a pastiche set in New England. This production by Plosive Productions was directed and designed by David Whiteley and featured Chris Ralph as Vanya, Mary Ellis as Sonia, Beverley Wolfe as Cassandra, Teri Loretto-Valentik as Masha, Drew Moore as Spike and Sarah Finn as Nina.

Here Sonia is the adoptive sister of Vanya and Masha; she and Vanya run the estate on behalf of their absent sister Masha, who claims to be earning all the necessary finds by being a Hollywood celebrity. Nina is a stage-struck neighbour, Cassandra the doom-laden house-help, and Spike is Masha's toy-boy.

This peculiar arrangement allows for some amusing variations on Chekhovian melancholy, lassitude and self-absorption, There are also plenty of opportunities to laugh at celebrity culture, dim but attractive young men, unrequited or misplaced passion, and, at a structural level, to make fun at the expense of the structure of the play, mainly through Cassandra's gnomic predictions and their eventual relevance to what happens.

Chris Ralph was convincing as the world-weary Vanya, ironic and on the whole resigned to his lot, and Mary Ellis was a frustrated Sonia, all too aware that her love for her 'brother' Vanya would never be returned, and further humiliated by her brash 'sister' Masha. Sarah Finn made a good impression as the innocent caught up in cross-currents beyond her grasp. The other three had a harder task with their characters, who are drawn in unsubtle colours and therefore have little chance to develop.

Though the play is based on an entertaining premise, it pushes the joke too far (or for too long) with too much resort to comic set pieces, such as Spike's taking literally a suggestion that he perform a 'reverse striptease', or the constant heavy-handed reminder that Cassandra's pronouncements will be misinterpreted or ignored (because of her name). There is also an unconscionably long outburst from Vanya in the second act about the degradation of modern society, which, though passionately performed, is in serious need of editing. And of course, being American, it cannot face the possibility that its characters may be caught in a situation from which there is no escape - there is a hint at the end that the three siblings may be able to change their dysfunctional ways.