Review - It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman: High Flying, Adored

Cultural elitists, rejoice! Christopher Durang's new comedy is a start-to-finish laugh riot. His funniest play since the days of Sister Mary Ignatius and Beyond Therapy is also graced with a stellar cast in a crackerjack production mounted by Nicholas Martin. Smart, silly, literate and farcical, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is the kind of fun night out every Broadway season needs.

David Korins' unit set depicts the well-worn farmhouse in Bucks County where the buttoned-up, reserved Vanya (deliciously underplaying David Hyde Pierce) lives with his adopted sister Sonia (a jittery, comically adorable Kristine Nielsen). The pair, neither of whom ever had any lasting romantic relationship, have lived there their entire lives, taking care of their ailing parents, who are now deceased, while their sister Masha (cluelessly narcissistic Sigourney Weaver), a wealthy star of trashy Hollywood blockbusters and five-time divorcee, supports them financially. Their only regular company is their housekeeper, Cassandra (outrageously silly Shalita Grant) who is given to going into trances and making seemingly random pronouncements of doom.

Their relatively quiet existence, where the highlight of the day might be an argument as to whether or not their handful of cherry trees constitutes an orchard, is interrupted by a visit from Masha and her latest boy toy, Spike, a much younger aspiring actor who thrives on the attention he gets whenever the opportunity arises to strip down to his skivvies. While the character is essentially an attractive dumb blonde, Durang and actor Billy Magnussen do an excellent job of keeping him quite aware of the power his physique grants him in his profession. Rounding out the company is Genevieve Angelson, sweet and sincere as Nina, the neighbor girl with an initial thing for Spike ("He's so attractive, except for his personality, of course.") but who develops a more significant friendship with Vanya through their mutually artistic souls.

As expected, Durang's text is supersized with highbrow wisecracks ("If everyone took antidepressants, Chekhov would have had nothing to write about.") but there is also a good deal of sweet pathos, particularly in watching how beautifully Nielsen's Sonia reinvents herself from a lonely recluse to an effervescently funny charmer. Her performance of a second act monologue where she takes an unexpected phone call from a potential suitor is one of the most heart-tugging scenes you're apt to see in many a Broadway season.

Pierce counters with an explosively funny rant, set off by Spike's obliviously rude behavior, where he mourns how individualized technology has robbed our society of communal experiences like licking stamps and watching The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Though Vanya quickly ponders if 'adventures' was maybe too strong a word for that show, audiences are sure to find Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike to be an uproarious communal adventure.

Photos by T. Charles Erickson: Top: Sigourney Weaver, Genevieve Angelson and David Hyde Pierce; Bottom: Billy Magnussen and Kristine Nielsen.

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There are certainly more graceful ways to end the first act of a solo play than to have the character tell the audience that she has to go to the bathroom, but I suppose Ann's playwright/performer Holland Taylor isn't trying to sell us on Texas Governor's Ann Richards' gracefulness.

Richards first gained national attention when, as the State Treasurer of Texas, she delivered the keynote address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention; only the second woman to do so. Though the brief clip of her speech that opens the play does not include her famous quip about George H.W. Bush being born with a silver foot in his mouth, it concludes with her well-intentioned, but inaccurate observation that Ginger Roger did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in high heels. (A more accurate statement would be that Hermes Pan did everything Astaire did, including the part about doing it backwards and in high heels.)

When Taylor finally takes the stage she's an impressively detailed image of the governor, nailing the accent, speech pattern and authoritative bearing. Would that her play, assembled from the subject's own words along with remembrances from others, was as impressive.

After opening with the former governor addressing students at a fictional Texas college, the bulk of the evening is set in her state capital office, where, joined only by the recorded voice of Julie White as her off-stage secretary, she fields a parade of phone calls and discusses an assortment of issues while trying to sort out the details of an upcoming family fishing trip.

The greatest potential for tension comes from her decision on whether or not to grant a death row inmate a stay of execution, but, like most issues in the play, it's brought up, discussed, and then ditched for the next one. Her defense of her vetoing of a bill that would allow for concealed weapons, a decision that may have led to her unsuccessful reelection bid, is undercut with a cheap joke about women never being able to find anything in their purses. She has a friendly chat with President Clinton, an eye-rolling conversation with an inexperience staffer who thought the governor would enjoy taking the day off on July 4th and even finds a moment in her perpetual multi-tasking to sew a loose section of fringe back onto the state flag.

With direction by Benjamin Endsley Klein, Ann is usually quite entertaining, but it has the same appeal as watching a stand-up comic performing her most famous routines. There is very little drama to fill the two acts and you might start feeling that the play could just end at any time without leaving you hanging on any plot point. In the end it all seems rather nice and inoffensive, and I seriously doubt the governor would ever describe herself that way.

Photo of Holland Taylor by Ave Bonar.

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