VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE Announced For Theatre Royal Bath's 2019 Summer Season

Theatre Royal Bath Productions today announces the UK premiere of Christopher Durang's Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike as part of its 2019 Summer Season, directed by the Tony Award-winning US director Walter Bobbie. The comedy, produced by special arrangement with Joey Parnes, Larry Hirschhorn, Sue Wagner and John Johnson, will open at the Ustinov Studio where it runs from 6 June to 6 July with press night on 12 June.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike will open Artistic Director Jonathan Church's third Summer Season at Theatre Royal Bath. As previously announced, the programme will also include Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit directed by Richard Eyre and starring Jennifer Saunders, Uncle Vanya directed by and starring Rupert Everett in a new version by David Hare, and The Argument starring Felicity Kendal and directed by Christopher Luscombe. Further casting and the full summer programme will be announced in due course.

Tony Award-winning Walter Bobbie directs Christopher Durang's comedy Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at Theatre Royal Bath's Ustinov Studio this summer. The original production premiered at the McCarter Theatre and Lincoln Center Theater in 2012 and after a successful run it transferred to Broadway where it received six Tony Award nominations and won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Play. The farce weaves themes from Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's work to explore the modern-day concerns of celebrity, social networking, and the troubling onset of middle age.

Vanya and his sister Sonia live a quiet life in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they grew up. But their sister Masha escaped many years ago and became a famous movie star. When Masha returns unannounced with her twenty-something boy toy, Spike, so begins a rollicking weekend of rivalry, regret and all-too true premonitions.

Walter Bobbie (director) won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the 1996 production of Chicago which holds the record for the longest-running musical revival ever presented on Broadway. The production also saw Bobbie receive the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical. Other Broadway directing credits include Footloose, Twentieth Century, Sweet Charity, High Fidelity, Venus in Fur and White Christmas. Bobbie served as Artistic Director of City Center's Encores! and sits on the Executive Board of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.

Christopher Durang (writer) is known for his works of absurdist and satirical comedy. His plays include Beyond Therapy, Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Baby with the Bathwater, Laughing Wild, A History of the American Film and Betty's Summer Vacation. In 1995 he won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award and in 2000 won the Sidney Kingsley Playwriting Award.

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