Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Lincoln Center Theater, New York

(212) 239-6200

***

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Amid a recent wave of Chekhov revivals, “it’s a relief to meet a play that doesn’t take the master of Slavic despair too seriously,” said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. You’d think that Christopher Durang’s caustic sensibility would lead him to “identify with the hope-starved souls” that populate the works of Anton Chekhov. But the playwright’s latest, an antic pastiche of various Chekhov dramas, is his way of lovingly telling the gloomy Russian to lighten up. To be sure, the title characters, who’ve been relocated to modern-day Bucks County, Pa., are still as miserable as their 19th-century prototypes. But Durang eventually dispenses with ennui and angst altogether in favor of a surprisingly sunny conclusion.

The events leading to it include many detours, said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. In this story, siblings Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) and Sonia (Kristine Nielsen) reside in their late parents’ farmhouse and make life monotonous by engaging in pointless airings of regret. Enter sister Masha (Sigourney Weaver) with her boy toy Spike (the uproarious Billy Magnussen) in tow. A famous actress, Masha “colonizes the environment with magnificent self-absorption,” and the play soon becomes “a very busy kettle of ideas”—though not all “brought to boil.” What the show lacks in coherence, however, it makes up for in “wry observational skills.”

Don’t overthink the Chekhov references, said Rex Reed in The New York Observer. Just enjoy Durang’s wit and the rollickingly good performances—from Weaver’s suave Masha to Nielsen’s “marvelous, cow-eyed” Sonia to Genevieve Angelson’s dewy Nina, a girl from next door. It is Pierce, however, who steals the show with an “impassioned, exhausting” speech about what’s wrong with the world today, “leaving the audience in tears of both laughter and philosophical agreement.” Durang has given Chekhov’s characters new life. Here, they’re not only intriguing; they’re also exhilarating.