| Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, back at Lincoln Center for one night | |
| Last Edit: mikem 01:12 pm EDT 05/09/24 | |
| Posted by: mikem 01:10 pm EDT 05/09/24 | |
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| Lincoln Center Theatre had its gala on Tuesday night, with a staged reading of Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, featuring David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen, and Sigourney Weaver from the original cast. I am a big fan of the show, having seen it once at the Newhouse and twice in the Golden. The reading was directed by Bartlett Sher (original director Nicholas Martin had passed away), and I think he did a great job. I particularly appreciated that the show was staged relatively far back on the Beaumont's thrust stage, so that I could still see faces despite being very far off to the side in the cheap seats. It was great to see Kristine Nielsen do The Phone Call one last time. David Hyde Pierce's "we licked postage stamps!" monologue was also a highlight, and the only time that the full thrust stage was used (with Pierce being very careful to pivot around so that everyone could see his face at one point or another). That part of the play, where Pierce's character writes a play about climate change because no one is taking it seriously, followed by his lengthy monologue about how people are so isolated and there are so few universally shared experiences, seems very prescient of Durang. He may have thought things were bad in 2012, but they are so much worse now. I thought Weaver was actually better in some ways than she was in the original run - back in 2012-2013, I think she was trying to show that Masha was detached from the world, but I felt some of her line readings seemed phony. Last night, she gave similar but less extreme line readings, and Masha fit in much better. The other three roles were played by Liesel Allen Yeager, who took over the role on Broadway after Genevieve Angelson left, David Hull, who was in the LA premiere directed by David Hyde Pierce, and Linda Lavin in the role of the housekeeper originally played by Shalita Grant. Lavin was really great. Yeager and Hull were also excellent, although I missed Billy Magnussen's interpretation of Spike as an all-id little kid in a very grown-up body. I had never been to a benefit staged reading before, and I was severely underdressed in a T-shirt. Almost every guy was wearing a jacket. I got an $82 ticket as an LCT member, and I didn't really look at the website. Most of the tickets included a dinner afterwards and went for up to $10,000 each. |
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