Playwright Christopher Durang delighted in comedy that juggled giddy guffaws with brainy, often bleak explorations of the absurdities of life. Durang, who died in April, skewered Catholicism, therapists, and literature, with 2012′s “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” recasting residents of bucolic Bucks County, Pa., as characters lifted from any one of Anton Chekhov’s plays. In the Gloucester Stage Company’s production of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which runs through June 23, director Rebecca Bradshaw takes what feels like an almost reverential approach to Durang’s comic chaos, which mutes some of the play’s joy without adding to its pathos.
To be fair, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” which earned Durang a Tony Award in 2013, has one of his thinnest plotlines, relying instead on finely drawn characters who attract and repel each other with both comic and tragic results. The action takes place in the lakeside home of Vanya (Diego Arciniegas) and Sonia (Adrianne Krstansky), two 50-something siblings whose lives never got going. They mope about the house “in mourning for their lives,” interrupted only by their housekeeper Cassandra, whose dialogue consists of quoting portents of doom from a grab bag of Greek dramas, mixed with a little bit of voodoo and delivered in a strong New Yawk accent by Eryn O’Sullivan. Durang delights in these non sequiturs, stringing all of them together in amusing, if disjointed dialogue that illuminates his quirky characters without doing much to advance the story.
Vanya and Sonia’s ennui is interrupted by the arrival of their sister Masha (Wendy Waring), a self-absorbed diva whose success has paid for the home where her siblings live, and whose ego is fed by her boy toy Spike (Jaime José Hernández), an aspiring actor whose talent lies primarily in his eagerness to strip down to his skivvies at a moment’s notice. The final character is Nina (Valyn Lyric Turner), a neighbor who attracts Masha’s jealously even as Nina proclaims her admiration for Masha’s talent.
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Masha has come home to unload the house, a delightfully lived-in place designed by Kristin Loeffler, who sets the stage on a platform supported by shelves visible only to the audience and filled with the flotsam and jetsam of a longtime vacation home: a jumble of puzzles, books, knickknacks that are rarely touched. But Masha, in her breezy way, only mentions booting her siblings out on the street in a conversation about a costume party they are all invited to — as long as they wear the costumes her unseen assistant has assembled. This detail provides visual riffing on Disney stereotypes of beauty and behavior as Masha appears as Snow White, Vanya as one of the Seven Dwarves, and Spike as Prince Charming. When the lovely Nina appears as a princess, she is summarily told to change into a dwarf costume so as not to compete. Sonia, however, refuses and steals the spotlight in a fabulous gown, pretending to be Maggie Smith in the 1978 movie “California Suite.”
Mining the zaniness of these proceedings — we see the preparations, never the party — requires performers who can sit comfortably inside these complicated characters, while whipping the comedy to a froth that is loaded with laughs but topped with a touch of heartache. While there are some deliriously funny moments (Masha’s initial reunion with her siblings, Arciniegas’s hapless, nostalgic Vanya, Turner’s sincere eagerness to please), Bradshaw can’t keep the pace tight and taut enough to keep the play from sagging. Too often the company seems to lose their groove, and have to work extra hard to get back up to speed.
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It is telling that the most compelling scene comes with Sonia’s monologue near the end of the play. After thoroughly enjoying herself at the party, she has received a phone call from a widower who invites her to dinner. Krstansky finds all the self-doubt, confusion, and vulnerability of a woman daring to open herself up to a possibility she’d never dared to imagine for herself. It’s a reminder that in the midst of Durang’s brilliant and often biting humor, was a heart full of hope.
VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE
Play by Christopher Durang. Directed by Rebecca Bradshaw. Presented by Gloucester Stage Company, 267 East Main St., Gloucester, through June 23. Tickets: $15-$67. gloucesterstage.com
