By Erin Hawkins
Olympic Peninsula News Group
SEQUIM — Olympic Theatre Arts is ending its Main Stage season this year with a bang.
For its final production of the 2016-17 season, director Jim Guthrie and his cast will present “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” a Tony Award-winning 21st-century comedy written by playwright Christopher Durang.
The show will open tonight at the Olympic Theatre Arts, 414 N. Sequim Ave., and continue through June 25, with the curtain rising at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and at 2 p.m. Sundays.
Tickets are $16 for adults and $10 for students.
The story revolves around three middle-aged siblings — Vanya, Sonia and Masha — and their dysfunctional relationships with one another.
Siblings Sonia and Vanya, played by Sara Nicholls and Ron Graham, live together at the ancestral family residence in Bucks County, Pa., with their cleaning woman, Cassandra, played by Jennifer Horton, who has “visions” and makes prophecies no one believes.
When movie star sister Masha, played by Angela Poynter, shows up at the family residence with her 29-year-old “boy toy” Spike, it makes for one big hilarious family.
“We’re both fans of Christopher Durang,” Graham said of himself and his wife, Poynter.
“His sense of humor is just about as sick and twisted as ours is,” Graham laughed.
“For an actor, it’s just a gift to get these kinds of characters,” Poynter said.
The dialogue between the modern characters is synonymous with conversations audience members might have with their siblings outside the theater. Guthrie refers to the play as what his drama professors would call “a comedy of manners.”
“Because of Durang’s dark and quirky sense of humor, those manners include a healthy helping of bad — in fact, bad manners in this play outnumber the good,” Guthrie said.
Guthrie added that many of the characters’ names — Vanya, Sonia and Masha — in this play are influenced by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. There also are several situations in the story that are Chekhovian, although the original playwright and Guthrie say the audience does not need to know Chekhov to enjoy it.
“The most important thing is that Durang is just plain funny,” Guthrie said in an Olympic Theatre Arts news release.
“I almost guarantee if [attendees] don’t see themselves as one of the characters in the play, they’re going to definitely see somebody they know,” Graham said.
The comedy opens today and runs for three weekends through June 25, with showings at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays.
Tickets are on sale online at olympictheatrearts.org/OTA or at the theater box office, which is open from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.
For more information, contact the office at 360-683-7326.
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Erin Hawkins is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach her at ehawkins@sequimgazette.com.
Sara Nicholls playing the role of Sonia, left, acts out a scene with cast siblings Ron Graham playing Vanya and Angela Poynter playing the role of Masha. (Erin Hawkins/Olympic Peninsula News Group)
