Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

Christopher Durang

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780802122384
• eBook ISBN:
  9780802192721
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro americano

Tony Award Winner, Best Play: "Hugely entertaining…deliciously madcap…offers some keen insights into the challenges and agonies of 21st-century life."— USA Today


Nominated for six Tony Awards,  Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is one of the most lauded and beloved Broadway plays of recent years. Vanya and his adopted sister Sonia live a quiet life in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they grew up, but their peace is disturbed when their movie star sister, Masha, returns unannounced with her twenty-something boy toy, Spike—and a weekend of rivalry, regret, and raucousness begins…

Winner of the Outer Circle Critics Award for Best Play
Winner of the Drama League Award for Best Production of a Play
Winner of the Drama Desk Award for Best Play
Winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Production
Winner of the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Play

ACT I

Scene 1

A farmhouse in Bucks County, PA. Not enormous, but comfortable, on a hill, many trees, a barn nearby, a pond in the near distance. There used to be a shed for peacocks, but the peacocks are long gone.

The Morning Room. Sunny, a sitting place with a nice window and comfortable wicker chairs.

VANYA, 55 to 60, in a nightshirt, walks in, carrying coffee. He sits, staring out the window. Sips the coffee, which tastes good. He feels somewhat contented. He stares a bit more. SONIA enters, age 50 or so, with coffee for him. Perhaps has a diet soda for herself. She is unsure of herself, melancholy, though keeps hoping for impossible things.

SONIA I brought you coffee, dearest Vanya.

VANYA I have some.

SONIA Oh. But I bring you coffee every morning.

VANYA Well, yes, but you weren’t available.

SONIA Well, I was briefly in the bathroom, you couldn’t wait?

VANYA I don’t know. The coffee was made, you weren’t there, I’m capable of pouring coffee into a cup.

SONIA But I like bringing you coffee in the morning.

VANYA Fine. Here, take this cup and give me that one.

SONIA All right.

She hands him the coffee she’s brought; he hands her his partly finished cup.

SONIA Now I feel better.

VANYA I’m glad.

Sonia sits. They both look out, staring into the distance.

SONIA Has the blue heron been at the pond yet this morning?

VANYA Not yet. Or it was here before I was.

SONIA It’ll probably come later. It’s such a beautiful bird.

VANYA Yes, it is. (sips the coffee) I’m afraid the other cup tasted better.

SONIA Well it’s the same coffee.

VANYA Well maybe I put in more milk than you did. Maybe that’s why it tastes better.

SONIA Don’t I usually put in the right amount of milk?

VANYA Well, yes. I don’t usually think about it. It’s just that I was drinking one coffee, and liking it, and then suddenly there’s a different cup of coffee, and I’m liking it slightly less. It’s no big deal. I’m just making pleasant conversation.

SONIA That’s not making pleasant conversation. It’s first thing in the morning, and you’re implying I don’t do anything right.

VANYA I didn’t say that.

SONIA Yes, you did.

VANYA I didn’t.

SONIA Well you implied it.

VANYA Forget it! The coffee’s delicious, I love it!

SONIA Oh, for God’s sake. Here, take the original cup back.

VANYA No, no, it’s not that different. I’m sorry I said anything.

Sonia forces him to take his original coffee cup back, the one he preferred. She takes the second cup back herself.

SONIA I mean I have two pleasant moments every day in my fucking life, and one of them is bringing you coffee.

VANYA Sonia, I’m sorry I said anything. Really, the two cups are almost identical. I should have said nothing.

SONIA All right.

VANYA I’m sorry. Really.

SONIA That’s all right.

She suddenly takes the cup she’s holding and smashes it on the floor, in the direction of the kitchen. Silence.

VANYA Is this how you’re going to be today?

SONIA I don’t know what you mean.

VANYA YOU JUST THREW THE FUCKING COFFEE AGAINST THE WALL!

SONIA I DIDN’T!

VANYA You didn’t??? What kind of idiot response is that?

SONIA I don’t know. It’s an angry “I hate my life and I hate you” response.

VANYA Well, it was effective then, good for you!

SONIA Thank you!

Silence.

SONIA I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have thrown the cup.

VANYA That’s all right.

SONIA It’s just I had bad dreams last night.

VANYA Oh?

SONIA I dreamt I was 52 and I wasn’t married.

VANYA Were you dreaming in the documentary form?

SONIA That’s not funny.

VANYA Really, I thought it was. You are 52, and you’re not married.

SONIA Whose fault is that?

VANYA Is the answer supposed to be me?

SONIA There isn’t any answer. And if I pine for you, that’s my business.

VANYA Don’t pine for me. That’s ridiculous. I’m 57 and I’ve told you for many years, I’m not interested in you in that way. I . . . march to a different drummer.

SONIA Why must you...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Also by the Author
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• Sigourney Weaver's Speech
• Halftitle
• Production Credits
• Characters
• ACT I
• ACT II
• Back Cover