REVIEW: Gripping portrayals drive Village Theatre Waterdown’s dramedy

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike by prolific playwright Christopher Durang is an outrageous and enjoyable play about sibling conflict. 

Running until May 3, the zany and character-driven Christopher Durang play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is being staged by Village Theatre Waterdown. The winner of the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play, this ensemble piece is an outrageous mix of comedy and drama.

Vanya and Sonia are middle-aged siblings who live in the family home in a picturesque Pennsylvania town after having cared for their deceased parents during their long decline. They constantly bicker and complain about the smallness and lack of opportunity in their lives. A popular target for their resentment is their movie star sister Masha, who legally owns the house and everything in it. Over the course of a few days, the overbearing Masha swoops in to visit with her much younger lover Spike and she reveals notions of selling the house once and for all. Resentments and anger flare up as the siblings’ hopes and fears come to the surface.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a comedic play written by American playwright and performer Durang. Some elements of the play borrow from the works of Russian writer Anton Chekhov, including character names and themes, such as quarrelsome sibling relationships, the hopefulness of youth, the challenges of aging, generational change, and the possible loss of home. In 2013, playwright Durang told Playbill, "my play is not a Chekhov parody … I take Chekhov scenes and characters and put them into a blender.” Thus, the titular figures, Vanya, Masha, and Sonia were named after Chekhov characters by their college professor parents.  

Critics have praised Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike as a humorous yet dramatic play that alludes to Chekhov’s works without requiring a familiarity with him. I have only a passing familiarity with Chekhov. 

The original cast of the play included 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. Weaver was Durang’s long-time friend and collaborator, with whom he co-wrote and performed the satirical cabaret Das Lusitania Songspiel. They both received 1980 Drama Desk nominations for that project. Weaver also starred in Durang’s 1996 play Sex and Longing.

A prolific playwright, Durang earned an MFA in playwriting from Yale School of Drama and his work was particularly popular throughout the 1980s. His career then underwent a resurgence in the 1990s. ​In 1994, Durang became a co-chair of the Lila Acheson Wallace American Playwriting program at the Juilliard School for two decades. Durang’s other notable plays include The Idiots Karamazov, A History of the American Film, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Betty’s Summer Vacation, Miss Witherspoon, and Chris Durang and Dawne. During his career, he won the Harvard Arts Medal and the PEN/Laura Pels Award for Master American Dramatist, and was inducted in the American Theater Hall of Fame. Over the years, Durang performed with a variety of top talents, including Weaver, Julie Andrews, Jean Smart, and Tyne Daly. Durang died on April 2, 2024.

According to Durang’s website, “[Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike] 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.” It premiered and had a short, sold-out run at McCarter, then moved to Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater and was in previews by the end of October 2012. In March 2013, it opened on Broadway for a limited run at the John Golden Theatre. It was a commercial success and won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play as well as the Tony.

Under the capable direction of Jaclyn Scobie, the Waterdown cast features Nicholas Banks as Vanya, Deb Dagenais as Sonia, Christine Hopkins as Masha, Kim Jonasson as Cassandra, Dante Casini as Spike, Jamiel Recta (in her first stage role!) as Nina.

Were there moments when I wasn’t quite certain what I was watching? Yes. Did the run time seem a little long? Also, yes. The pacing of Act One feels somewhat sluggish. The play’s happy ending is surprisingly pleasant and yet it seems too simple and facile for the relationships and motivations Durang has taken such time to build.

What is incontrovertibly worth the price of admission is the opportunity to watch the performances of the three seasoned and talented actors of the local stage: Hopkins, Jonasson, and Dagenais. The commitment and fearlessness with which they play Masha, Cassandra, and Sonia makes this production a master class for the viewer.

Hopkins continues to astound me with her range. I first saw her play a troubled and manipulative scientist in Waterdown’s Sequence, and then witnessed her incredible turn as the desperately resilient Linda Loman in Dundas Little Theatre’s production of Death of a Salesman, both in 2025. In this play, she eats up the stage with her aging-yet-glamorous starlet Masha, who arrives at the family home with all the force of a woman used to getting her own way. Yet she reveals a layer of insecurities and anxieties under that sequinned and glossy veneer. I would actually love to see her play Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, a role that is name-dropped within this play.

The phrase is woefully overused, but Jonasson truly is a “force of nature” as the outrageous housekeeper/fortune teller Cassandra. From the second she appears onstage, all eyes are upon her as she shrieks and gestures wildly and demands that her prophecies of doom be heard and heeded by all. To use another popular metaphor, Jonasson “leaves it all on the field,” and I was duly impressed.

Dagenais has the toughest assignment: make audiences root for Sonia, the depressed and repressed and petulant caregiver of the family who feels life has passed her by (but too often, it seems, has had her disappointment fuelled by her own self-pity and inaction). Dagenais manages to imbue Sonia with enough quiet desperation and a flicker of hope and determination to counterbalance the discomfort she makes us feel as she’s caught in her cycle of constant complaints and passive-aggressive snipes. She’s frustrating to be around, but we cheer when she has the courage to reach out and grab some happiness.

Mention must be made of Banks, whose Vanya comes into his own in Act Two with a spectacular and gripping monologue. There is genuine warmth and sweetness to the interactions between Banks and Nina. Director Scobie says in her program notes that a “struggle for connection drives each character’s journey and helps them come to terms with their own self-worth.” We can see this clearly in the connection between Vanya and Nina, and Nina’s gentle belief in Vanya’s creative project. Recta portrays Nina with an almost otherworldly innocence and hopefulness amid the rancour of the siblings’ warfare.  

The set design of the play allows for most of the stage to be utilized while providing a peek at a landing and set of stairs that evoke a much bigger house. It also allows for noises and actions to occur out of sight to create more complex situations. The device of the large, imaginary windows overlooking the pond from the sunroom also provides a larger sense of place and orients the action towards the audience. Congratulations to director Scobie, producer and set designer Deb Koehler, the set construction crew, stage manager Anne Hogan, and sound designer Erynn Garland (and operators Garland and Peter Jonasson) for their work in building and choreographing and imagining the world inside and outside the house in Buck’s County.

Tickets are available for the remaining shows.

NEED TO KNOW

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Continuing May 1, 2, 7:30 p.m. (new time!)
April 25, 26 and May 3, 2 p.m.
Village Theatre Waterdown
Memorial Hall, 317 Dundas Street (Hwy 5), Waterdown
Tickets: $25
Box office: Advance tickets at 440 Locust Street, Burlington, by phone at (905) 681-6000 or online
Run-time: approx. 2 hours 45 minutes, including a 20 min. intermission
Audience Advisory: This show contains mature content and language and rare loud noises.