Tag Archives: Lincoln Center Theater

VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE

Three siblings (Kristine Nielsen, David Hyde Pierce, and Sigourney Weaver) examine their lives and don’t necessarily like what they see in Christopher Durang’s delightful Chekhovian satire (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 13, $85
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

When he was at Yale in the 1970s, Christopher Durang teamed with Albert Innaurato and Jack Feldman on The Idiots Karamazov, a musical about a Russian translator that begins with a song titled “O, We Gotta Get to Moscow,” as she confuses Dostoevsky with Chekhov and other writers. That line shows up again in Durang’s delightful new satire, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, running through January 13 at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse theater. Durang sets his latest play in a Bucks County farmhouse by a lake where a blue heron stops by daily, based on the Bucks County farmhouse by a lake with a blue heron where Durang and his partner reside. Living in the fictional house are Vanya (David Hyde Pierce) and Sonia (Kristine Nielsen), a pair of fiftysomething step-siblings who have essentially sacrificed what lives they might have had by taking care of their ill, elderly parents while their sister, Masha (Sigourney Weaver), became a famous movie star gallivanting around the world with five husbands. Clearly, their parents had a thing for Chekhov; Masha is named after characters from The Seagull and Three Sisters, Vanya and the adopted Sonia from Uncle Vanya. Invited to a neighbor’s costume party, Masha arrives at the house in grand diva fashion, overemoting and unable to keep her hands off her hot new boy toy, Spike (Billy Magnussen), who enjoys taking off most of his clothes at a moment’s notice and striking muscular poses. Masha quickly grows jealous when Spike meets young, pretty ingénue Nina (Genevieve Angelson), a wannabe actress named after the young, innocent actress in The Seagull. Meanwhile, the cleaning lady, Cassandra (Shalita Grant), makes dire predictions that keep coming true, just like her namesake, the Greek mythological figure with second sight. As Vanya, Sonia, Masha, Spike, and Nina prepare for the party — Masha insists they all go as characters from Snow White, with Masha as the beautiful protagonist, slyly referencing Weaver’s portrayal of the evil stepmother in the 1997 television movie Snow White: A Tale of Terror — jealousy, fear, deception, childhood resentment, and more bubble to the surface and threaten to erupt, albeit in primarily wacky, hysterical ways, until Vanya lets loose in a tirade to end all tirades.

Spike (Billy Magnussen) and Masha (Sigourney Weaver) flaunt their sexual desire in thoroughly enjoyable Durang comedy (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

You don’t need to know anything about Chekhov and his searing dramas about seriously dysfunctional families to get a huge kick out of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, which has a unique family feel itself — Weaver has been working with Durang since the Yale days, Hyde Pierce starred in the Broadway production of the playwright’s Beyond Therapy (as well as Peter Brook’s The Cherry Orchard), and Nielsen is Durang’s acknowledged muse, having appeared in many of his shows, in parts specifically written for her. Director Nicholas Martin, who previously helmed Durang’s Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public, keeps things relatively natural and grounded even with Weaver, Magnussen, and Grant playing things deliciously way over the top, as the story’s tender heart is wonderfully captured by Nielsen and Hyde Pierce, who agonize over their loneliness and advancing age, the importance of family, and, perhaps most Chekhovian, a world that seems to be passing them by. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a thoroughly enjoyable, if often goofy, mashup from one of America’s most engaging satirists at the top of his game. (On November 30 at 6:00, there will be a Platform Series talk between Durang and Martin in the lobby of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, free and open to the public. And be sure to pick up a copy of the fall 2012 Lincoln Center Review, which includes Durang’s “My Life with Chekhov,” an essay detailing seven encounters he had with the Russian playwright, dating back to when he was fourteen.) [ed note: As of March 1, the production can now be seen on Broadway at the Golden Theatre, where it is running through the end of June.]

SLOWGIRL

Željko Ivanek and Sarah Steele make a powerful team in Greg Pierce’s beautifully done SLOWGIRL (photo by Erin Baiano)

Claire Tow Theater
LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St.
Extended through August 5, $20
www.lct.org

Lincoln Center has inaugurated its new low-price, 112-seat Claire Tow Theater, which sits above the Vivian Beaumont and Mitzi E. Newhouse, with the world premiere of Greg Pierce’s wonderful two-character Slowgirl. After being blamed for a high school tragedy back home, seventeen-year-old Becky (Sarah Steele) is sent off to spend a few days with her reclusive uncle Sterling (Željko Ivanek), a divorced lawyer who has been living by himself in a shack in the jungles of Costa Rica for nine years. Whereas Becky is outgoing and seems to never be able to shut up and relax, Sterling chooses his words far more carefully, as if each one pains him to say out loud, while wincing at Becky’s openness and questionable language. The two very different people eventually bond over smoothies and iguanas as Becky talks about what happened to her somewhat off classmate known as Slowgirl, who was seriously injured at a graduation party, and Sterling discusses the events that ultimately led him into the jungle.

The reclusive Sterling (Željko Ivanek) is forced to face some dark secrets in SLOWGIRL (photo by Erin Baiano)

Emmy winner and multiple Tony nominee Ivanek, most well known for recurring roles on such television series as Homicide, Damages, and Oz in addition to stage appearances in such shows as The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and Brighton Beach Memoirs, is mesmerizing as Sterling, a pent-up bundle of nerves who can barely get the words out of his mouth, while Steele (All-American, Russian Transport) is delightful as Becky, a fast-talking teen with no filter, spitting out whatever’s on her mind. Rachel Hauck’s main set, Sterling’s open-air shack, rises at one point to reveal a labyrinth Sterling built to help him silently concentrate and focus, something Becky seems incapable of doing. Leah Gelpe’s sound design includes animal and bird noises that make the audience feel like they’re in the middle of the jungle, while Anne Kauffman’s (This Wide Night, Thugs) direction seamlessly weaves the characters and story together. Pierce (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) has written a compelling, intelligent, splendidly nuanced hundred-minute drama that is filled with small surprises and little touches that serve as a terrific introduction to Lincoln Center’s intimate new theater, which is dedicated to works by emerging playwrights, directors, and designers, with tickets for all productions only $20.

BLOOD AND GIFTS

BLOOD AND GIFTS looks at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan through the eyes of an American operative who befriends a local warlord (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 8, $85
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Sociopolitical playwright J. T. Rogers transported audiences to Rome in Madagascar and Rwanda in The Overwhelming, telling intimate stories of Americans abroad. In his latest work, the Lincoln Center commission Blood and Gifts, the Brooklyn-based writer examines the Soviet war in Afghanistan as seen through the eyes of CIA operative James Warnock (a strong, confident Jeremy Davidson). With his wife back in the States, Warnock heads to Islamabad as the new station chief, ready to offer cold, hard cash to Colonel Afridi (Gabriel Ruiz), a Pakistani military intelligence chief seeking to help Afghan freedom fighters, in particular the extremely dangerous and unpredictable Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Warnock joins with cynical British MI6 lifer Simon Craig (an appropriately twitchy and nervous Jefferson Mays), while their counterpart is the sly Dmitri Gromov (a very funny Michael Aronov), a Soviet agent trying to keep tabs on the American, since the United States has made it very clear that it is not getting involved in the conflict. Warnock quickly develops a close relationship with mujahideen warlord Abdullah Khan (Bernard White) and his right-hand man, Saeed (Pej Vahdat), eventually bringing them to Washington to attempt to pry more funding out of Senator Jefferson Birch (Robert Hogan) and the rest of Congress. With the cold war coming to an end, politics and family collide head-on, with the main characters taking a painful look at their own personal lives, measuring their public responsibility against their private needs as they contemplate the sacrifices they’ve made in the name of country.

Spies from America, England, and the Soviet Union are both friends and enemies in J. T. Rogers’s political thriller (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Blood and Gifts is a powerful drama about men playing war games, about fathers and sons, about superpowers invading seemingly vulnerable yet ultimately impenetrable foreign nations. Although it takes place between 1981 and 1991, it is as much about today (Iraq, Afghanistan) and tomorrow (Iran?) as it is about yesterday (Vietnam, Korea). Bartlett Sher directs with a swift hand, moving things quickly on Michael Yeargan’s small, sparse set, which consists of a tiled floor flanked on three sides by benches on which some of the actors sit while waiting for their next scene to come up, watching the action along with the audience. Davidson plays Warnock with a square-jawed determination, heading a solid cast that also includes a humorous turn by John Procaccino as blustery CIA head Walter Barnes. Beginning life as a one-act at the Tricycle Theatre’s “The Great Game: Afghanistan” series before making its full-length debut at London’s National Theatre, Blood and Gifts is a compelling spy thriller that takes audiences behind the scenes of the inner workings of the business of war and the high cost paid by the men and women on the sidelines, as well as those right in the middle of the action.