Photo Flash: Meet and Greet With Eric Hissom, Grace Gonglewski & More to Star in Arena Stage's VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE

Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater announces the full company for the Washington, D.C. premiere of Christopher Durang's Tony Award-winning comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Helen HayesAward-winning director and playwright Aaron Posner, known for his Chekhov-inspired plays Stupid f-ing Bird and Life Sucks (Or the Present Ridiculous), lends his hand to this riotous sendup, which satirizes characters and themes from Anton Chekhov's classics. In this "sunny new play about gloomy people" (New York Times), siblings Vanya and Sonia live out their days in an endless, bleak tableau in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. All seems numbingly mundane until in sweeps hurricane Masha, their fading movie star sister, with her shiny new boy toy and a big announcement. Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike runs April 3-May 3, 2015 in the Fichandler Stage. Check out a first look at the cast below!

The unforgettable cast of characters features long-time Posner collaborators Eric Hissom (Theater J's Life Sucks (Or the Present Ridiculous)) as Vanya and Philadelphia native Grace Gonglewski, a frequent performer with Arden Theatre Company, as the glamorous and self-absorbed Masha. Joining Hissom and Gonglewski are D.C. nativesSherri L. Edelen (Arena Stage's My Fair Lady, Signature Theatre's Gypsy) as Sonia and Jefferson Farber (Signature Theatre's Shakespeare's R&J) as Masha's newest boy-toy Spike. Jessica Frances Dukes, most recently seen atArena Stage as Tonya in King Hedley II, plays housekeeper and soothsayer Cassandra. As the aspiring actress Nina,Arena Stage introduces Rachel Esther Tate (Off-Broadway's Hamlet and Saint Joan) in her area debut.

The creative team for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike includes set designer Daniel Conway, costume designer Paloma Young, lighting designer Robert Perry, original composition and sound design by James Sugg, wig designer Anne Nesmith, New York casting by Tara Rubin Casting, Lindsay Levine, CSA, stage manager Amber Dickerson and assistant stage manager Michael D. Ward.

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