VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE
Charing Cross Theatre until January 8. Tickets: 0844 930650
Christopher Durang’s play takes modern variations of Chekhov’s characters and weaves them into a loose assembly of his themes, but I can’t decide whether it’s a clever and affectionate tribute to the playwright or a self-indulgent exercise in intellectual vanity. Over-fastidious Vanya (Michael Maloney) lives with his adopted sister Sonia (Rebecca Lacey), a lightly embittered unmarried woman. Well into fractious middle age, they are steadily atrophying in their family home supported by their glamorous but brittle actress sister Masha (Janie Dee) who comes to visit with her latest toyboy Spike (Charlie Maher) and corrals them all to attend a local costume party. While the featherbrained Spike is forever showing off his buff torso to Vanya’s surreptitious interest (left) and everyone else’s consternation, young wide-eyed neighbour Nina (Lukwesa Mwamba) arrives to join in the ‘fun’. Events are overseen by housekeeper Cassandra (Sara Powell), half oracle and half voodoo priestess.
There is much talk of ageing and money but the constant allusions to Chekhov (primarily The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard), Greek tragedy and American popular culture (I Love Lucy, Neil Simon, Old Yeller) jostle against each other with such addled complacency that I felt I was the victim of a ‘smugging’.
It is pleasingly performed however, especially by Dee, Maloney and Lacey – the last two of whom have seriously good monologues in the second half. But there can’t have been much competition in 2013 when it won a Tony Award for Best Play.