Theatre Royal Bath Productions today announces the UK premiere of Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike as part of its 2019 Summer Season, directed by the Tony Award-winning US director Walter Bobbie. The comedy, produced by special arrangement with Joey Parnes, Larry Hirschhorn, Sue Wagner and John Johnson, will open at the Ustinov Studio where it runs from 6 June to 6 July.
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will open Artistic Director Jonathan Church’s third Summer Season at Theatre Royal Bath. As previously announced, the programme will also include Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit directed by Richard Eyre and starring Jennifer Saunders, Uncle Vanya directed by and starring Rupert Everett in a new version by David Hare, and The Argument starring Felicity Kendal and directed by Christopher Luscombe. Further casting and the full summer programme will be announced in due course.
The original production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike premiered at the McCarter Theatre and Lincoln Center Theater in 2012 and after a successful run it transferred to Broadway where it received six Tony Award nominations and won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play. The farce weaves themes from Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s work to explore the modern-day concerns of celebrity, social networking, and the troubling onset of middle age.
Vanya and his sister Sonia live a quiet life in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they grew up. But their sister Masha escaped many years ago and became a famous movie star. When Masha returns unannounced with her twenty-something boy toy, Spike, so begins a rollicking weekend of rivalry, regret and all-too true premonitions.
