Cygnet breaks in new black-box theater with ‘Vanya’ comedy

A family dress-up in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” costumes inside a staid country farmhouse is just one of the absurdities in Christopher Durang’s “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” Another is the aforementioned Sonia  impersonates actress Maggie Smith one minute and a wild turkey the next.

Throw in more than a few Anton Chekhov easter eggs and it’s no wonder that “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” is playwright Durang’s most honored work.

It won the Tony Award for Best Play in 2013 and continues to be widely produced. In San Diego alone, it’s 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.

“The reason that people do it so often is it is Durang’s most human play and it has the most grace,” said Anthony Methvin, who’s directing Cygnet Theatre’s production of “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” in its brand-new Dottie Studio Theater at The Joan in Arts District Liberty Station. “The absurdist touches are all there, too. It’s completely wackadoo.”

Durang’s 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’s 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.

Excepting Spike, all the titular characters’ names can be found in Chekhovian works, and though scholars will identify reminders of “The Seagull,” “The Cherry Orchard” and “Three Sisters,” Durang himself has scoffed at the suggestion that “Vanya and Sonia …” is a Chekhov parody.

“He (Durang) pulls at those threads of longing and nostalgia and family relationships and tells them through his own, very ‘Durangian’ perspective,” said Methvin. “There’s always this sense of melancholy, but up against it this sense of the absurd, and that’s where the humor is derived.”

Cygnet’s Dottie Theater-opening “Vanya and Sonia …” is a Durangian reunion for Oswald. A decade ago, he directed a production of the playwright’s “Baby with the Bathwater” at Diversionary Theatre in University Heights, the cast of which included his current co-star, Wride.

“I love this piece (‘Vanya and Sonia …”),” said Oswald, who last appeared at Cygnet in 2015 in “The Whale,” which Wride directed. “It has an optimism that Durang’s work doesn’t always have, and a realism to it. Yet it’s still Durang — crazy moments that would not happen in real life.”

Its craziness aside, Durang’s play does find its characters looking inside themselves, possibly for the first real time, and daring to change.

“One of the beautiful things about this play,” said Oswald, “is 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.”

Director Methvin circles back to his observation of the play being Durang’s most human work.

“We’re meeting these characters at inflection points in their lives,” he said. “Every one of them is forced to look at the person they’ve been and forced to look at the person they’re going to become on the other side of these couple of days in the story.”

Added Oswald: “It’s just a really funny play about how we move past the obstacles.”

The play’s cast also include Daisy Martinez as the fortunetelling housekeeper Cassandra and Emma Nossal as the young actress-neighbor Nina.

The inaugural production in the new Dottie Studio Theater also marks Methvin’s first directing assignment at Cygnet, where previously he assistant-directed “Dogfight” in 2015 and performed in the cast of “Monty Python’s Spamalot” in 2018.

“To be welcomed in and to be trusted with the first show in the Dottie is special to me,” said Methvin, who is producing director of Backyard Renaissance Theatre Company. He calls his principal cast members (Oswald, Wride and Bowman) “people that I have the utmost respect for as artists, as directors, as mentors and as people.”

Methvin also sees “a lovely kind of parallel” between Cygnet simultaneously staging “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” in the Dottie and the Stephen Sondheim/James Goldman musical “Follies” in the larger Joseph Clayes III Theater at The Joan. “Both have these casts that are San Diego royalty standing side by side with up-and-comers. There’s a lot about looking back vs. looking forward in both.”

Oswald considers himself “honored to be a part of” the launch of the Dottie Theater. “I could not be happier with it,” he said. “It’s exciting to be the first show. We’ll be the first set of ghosts to haunt this space.”

‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’

When: 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

Where: Cygnet Theatre’s Dottie Studio Theatre at The Joan, 2880 Roosevelt Road, Arts District Liberty Station, San Diego

Tickets: $58 and up

Phone: 619-337-1525

Online: cygnettheatre.com