Tickets are available NOW at www.city-theater.org
For Immediate Release: March 10, 2025
Media Contact: Michelle Kramer-Fitzgerald, City Theater Company, 302-377-3156 or
City Theater Company (CTC) springs into hilarity this April with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, the 2013 Tony Award winner for Best Play by Christopher Durang that The New York Times called a “deliriously funny, heedless good time.”
Durang’s play is a light riff on Chekhov, with contemporary avatars of the Russian playwright’s most famous characters. Vanya and Sonia have been transported from the drawing rooms of classic theater to an old family farmhouse in Bucks County, where the problems of 21st century life are simply too much to bear for this brother and sister. The middle-aged siblings are stuck in a rut. With only each other for company, they bitch and bicker – to great comic effect – about their lot in life.
But then their glamorous movie-star sister Masha and her latest inappropriate fling Spike fly in for a visit, and upset the comfortably dreary ennui, with help from daffy-but-wise housekeeper Cassandra and Nina, the bright young thing from next door.
The result? An ensemble comedy that covers everything from climate change to aging to dreams both dashed and realized, all to hilarious and heartfelt effect. As the Huffington Post put it, the play leaves audiences feeling “You’ve only spent a weekend with these people, but you might want to spend the rest of your life with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike."
CTC has a long history with Durang, producing several of his works over the past 31 years. Their first full-length production in 1993 was his Laughing Wild at O’Friel’s Irish Pub in 1994, followed by Baby With the Bathwater in 1995, The Marriage of Bette and Boo in 1997, and Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge in 2006.
“There’s a reason we have returned to Durang over and over throughout our history,” says Artistic Director Kerry Kristine McElrone. “His brand of dark, absurdist comedy is very much in line with an outlier theater company that started in a bar during a recession. Durang’s work speaks to our collective fear of the unknown as it simmers beneath the surface of our relationships and our identities - and occasionally boils over. It’s about how we handle the absurd ‘stuff’ that life throws at us. Throw in a healthy mistrust of ‘authority‘ and you have a writer whose influence on CTC has never been absent from our approach to
what we do.”
Director Joe Pukatsch makes his CTC debut with Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Pukatsch, a prolific local theater and film director who recently directed Stephen King's Misery for Wilmington Drama League, was intrigued to helm a comedy that seemed outside of his usual wheelhouse.
“I usually do like my comedy on the darker side,” says Pukatasch, “but the fun thing with Durang is that his comedies are dark, and so relevant to current times. There is a point in the show where Vanya passionately emotes about the act of licking a stamp. Such a small thing, but one lost on many current generations. This sends him into a tear remembering the simplicity of a world without cell phones and the internet and a thousand cable channels. All the things we have lost to the fast pace of technological immediacy.”
Pukatsch continues “As a guy who actually played (and beat) Asteroids on the original, simple console of an Atari, I recognize Vayna’s longing for a world that, despite its limitations, allowed us to experience life on a much larger scale. This theme of growing older through decades of modernization – and how we handle that – really spoke to me.”
Actor Paul McElwee plays Vanya. McElwee is a CTC fan favorite, with memorable turns in Dancing At Lughnasa, La Cage Aux Folles, Gypsy, Assassins, and BatBoy, among others. He often plays a character who finds himself at the center of the kind of crazy world Durang sets his oeuvre in.
Says McElwee, “Vanya is afraid of change, scary change. I think a lot of folks can resonate with that at this moment, as the world we’re in now is as bananas as ever. That said, we can cherish the solid foundation of our memories without getting too lost in the past. We must always strive for personal and community growth. To quote another character from the play - we must always get our hopes up.”
McElrone, who has done her share of Durang at CTC, appears here as Masha. Both as an actor and an artistic director, she feels that Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is the perfect choice to round out CTC’s 2024-25 season.
“It’s no secret that we are living in turbulent times, and most of us are not responding well,” says McElrone. “We need each other. We need art. We need comedy, we need to laugh out loud at ourselves and at the world around us. CTC’s commitment to saying the quiet part out loud – and saying it faster, louder, funnier than anyone else – is what we do in response to the chaos. It’s what we’ve always done. And it’s what we will keep doing.”
CAST & CREATIVE TEAM
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike stars Jordan Eck, Mary Catherine Kelley, Kerry Kristine McElrone, Paul McElwee, Mikala Plymyer (CTC debut), and Jennifer Youngblood.
Directed by Joseph Pukatsch. Set design by Rick Neidig. Lighting design by Jason Burns. Original Music by Joe Trainor. Stage Managed by Al Rubincan. Production Managed by Stuart Thomas. Promotional art by Joe del Tufo and Joe Trainor.
IF YOU GO
TICKETS:
General admission $45. Military with ID and Student with ID $35.
Tickets available now at city-theater.org or at the door for all shows.
SHOW DATES/TIMES:
VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE runs April 4-12, all shows at 8 P.M. with one matinee on Sunday, April 6 at 1 P.M.
Rated R (language, light sexual content.) Run time approximately two hours with one intermission.
LOCATION:
All shows at THE BLACK BOX, home of City Theater Company and Fearless Improv, inside The Delaware Contemporary, 200 South Madison Street, Wilmington, DE 19801.
All shows feature free admission to the museum galleries and a cash bar. The Delaware Contemporary offers free parking, and is a short walk from the Joseph R. Biden Amtrak train station. It is located on the Wilmington Riverfront, home to a scenic Riverwalk featuring a variety of restaurants for pre- or post-show dining.
CREDITS:
Originally produced on Broadway by:
Joey Parnes, Larry Hirschhorn, Joan Raffe/Jhett Tolentino, Martin Platt & David Elliot,
Pat Flicker Addiss, Catherine Adler, John O’Boyle, Joshua Goodman, Jamie deRoy/Richard Winkler, Cricket Hooper, Jiranek/Michael Palitz, Mark S. Golub & David S. Golub, Radio Mouse Entertainment, Shawdowcatcher Entertainment, Mary Cossette/Barbara Manocherian, Megan Savage/Meredith Lynsey Schade, Hugh Hysell/Richard Jordan, Cheryl Wiesenfeld/Ron Simons, S.D. Wagner, John Johnson in association with McCarter Theatre Center and Lincoln Center Theater
Originally commissioned and produced by McCarter Theatre Center, Princeton, N.J. Emily Mann, Artistic Director; Timothy J. Shields, Managing Director; Mara Isaacs, Producing Director; and produced by Lincoln Center Theater, New York City under the direction of André Bishop and Bernard Gersten in 2012.
“Here Comes the Sun”
Written by George Harrison
Published by Harrisongs, Ltd. (ASCAP)
Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved.
ABOUT CITY THEATER COMPANY:
City Theater Company, founded in 1993, performs contemporary comedies, new works, and classic musicals to critical acclaim in an intimate black box theater on the Wilmington waterfront. This organization is supported, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. The Division promotes Delaware arts events on
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