Photo by Chaz D. Photography
The Off-Central Players’ production of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is both a wonderful comedy and stirring drama. This play, with its hilarious jokes, puns and double entendres, explores some very serious issues such as climate change, supporting aging parents, Alzheimer’s, isolation, aging, and sexuality while following the lives of a brother and sister trying to cope with their rather bland lives compared to their world-famous celebrity sister.
Vanya (Michael Gregory) and Sonia (Jill Schroeder) have spent the last 15 years caring for their parents as they progressed through old age and dementia to death. Now that the parents are no longer in the picture, the brother and sister really don’t know what to do with their lives. And then their sister, Masha (Tracey Reynolds) blows into town with her boy-toy, Spike (Will Richard) in tow.
Sonia is overwrought by her failure to have lived a life. Vanya is calm, cool and collected as he reflects on the peacefulness of his current life after the tumult of caring for their parents. Masha, in town for a neighbor’s costume party, is fighting the loss of celebrity as age overtakes her movie career, flaunting her sexuality by dragging Spike along.
Masha, whose self-centered attitude and sense of entitlement remind us of a current politician, wants to sell the family house where Vanya and Sonia have lived their entire lives, effectively throwing her siblings out into the cold.
A House Full of Complications
And then there’s Cassandra (Kayah Bolilla-Mas), the cleaning lady with the power to foretell the future and cast voodoo curses on all who disparage her. Her explosive, off the wall, antics stir the pot of emotions with the three siblings by predicting hilarious and yet, serious, events in everyone’s life.
Photo by Chaz D. Photography
Nina, (Eve Grissinger) as the neighbors’ niece, rounds out this menagerie of psychoses with a simplicity and naivety that draws Spike away from Masha and encourages Vanya to share the play he’s written about how a molecule would feel if the world blew up.
And that’s just the first act.
When Everything Falls Apart
The second act takes place after the costume party, where everything seems to fall apart, only to be rebuilt as dreams are realized, reality is accepted, and harsh truths are uncovered.
Vanya and Sonia might have their dreams fulfilled. Masha will realize that her life has changed, but that it’s a good change. Spike and Nina will realize that they live in two different worlds. Cassandra will make a final prediction about how everything will turn out for the better.
Audience members of a certain age, just might go out into the night with a song on their lips.
See Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
The Off-Central Players, 2260 1st Ave. S., St. Petersburg. Through Sept. 20. Thurs.-Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sat., 5 p.m.; and Sun., 3 p.m. theoffcentral.com, 727-202-7019.
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