You can’t hide from Chekhov! Not only are his classics revived again and again — even “Ivanov” just came back to us — the long-dead Russian playwright is infiltrating new works, too.
Case in point: Christopher Durang’s zany new play, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.” The first three names are lifted from Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” and “Three Sisters” — and played, respectively, by David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielsen and Sigourney Weaver.
As the last, jarringly American moniker indicates, Durang — the author of such biting comedies as “Beyond Therapy” and “Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them” — is up to mischief again.
The show that opened at Lincoln Center last night isn’t a full-on pastiche, though. Durang transposes the Chekhovian themes of thwarted affections and unlived lives from 19th-century Russia to 21st-century Bucks County, Pa.
But while Durang ladles one-liners and increasingly kooky situations — one of them involving Snow White and a couple of her dwarves — he also adds flickers of bittersweet emotion.
Hyde Pierce and Nielsen brilliantly handle the mood shifts as Vanya and Sonia, middle-aged step-siblings who share the lovely country house where they grew up.
These people are starved for love and paralyzed by inaction. “I have too much free time,” the daffy Sonia says. “There’s so much I could fill the free time with, I can’t make decisions. So I do nothing.” There you go: all of Chekhov in two lines!
Ebullient and always in googly-eyed motion, Nielsen, a Durang regular, is the perfect foil for Hyde Pierce. This master of the slow burn can express a whole range of reactions while keeping his face almost blank.
A lot less convincing is Weaver, who tries way too hard as Vanya and Sonia’s movie-star sister, Masha. Nothing kills farce like obvious effort, and Weaver’s game but strained performance throws Nicholas Martin’s production off-balance.
Too bad, because Masha is a doozy of a role. This is an actress who had classical aspirations but made a fortune in a tawdry movie called “Sexy Killer.” Flamboyant and narcissistic — “I suppose I’m monstrous, but lovable monstrous, I hope” — she’s dragged along her blissfully dumb new boyfriend, Spike (the very funny Billy Magnussen).
Add to the mix an aspiring young actress, Nina (Genevieve Angelson), and a prophetic housecleaner named Cassandra (Shalita Grant), and suddenly the whole house — rendered in painstakingly detailed life size by set designer David Korins — is in overdrive.
The play gets a bit muddled as Durang piles on the physical and verbal gags at breakneck speed, and throws in an aria of enraged nostalgia for Hyde Pierce. Still, his sympathy for the forlorn Vanya and Sonia is contagious. You leave hoping these two endearing, decidedly unproductive members of society will settle into some kind of grudging happiness.