VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE is produced by Lincoln Center Theater in association with the McCarter Theater, where it was commissioned and where it will run from September 7 through October 7, prior to beginning performances in New York.

            In VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE playwright Christopher Durang takes characters and themes from Chekhov, mixes them up and pour them into a blender; and the result is his latest play set in present day Bucks County, Pennsylvania.  Vanya and his stepsister Sonia have lived their entire lives in their family’s farmhouse.  While they stayed home to take care of their ailing parents, their sister Masha has been gallivanting around the world as a successful actress and movie star, leaving Vanya and Sonia to feel trapped and regretful.  Their soothsayer/cleaning woman Cassandra keeps warning them about terrible things in the future, which include a sudden visit from Masha  and her twenty-something boy toy Spike. 

            Clifford Odets’ GOLDEN BOY, is the story of Joe Bonaparte, a young, gifted violinist who is torn between pursuing a career in music and earning big money as a prize fighter. This will be a rare Broadway production for the Odets’ classic which originally premiered on Broadway in 1937 at the Belasco Theatre and has only been revived once.

            Cast and design teams for both productions will be announced at a later date.

Clifford Odets (1906 – 1963) dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to become an actor.  As one of the original members of the New York City-based left-wing ensemble, the Group Theatre, Odets found his true calling as a playwright who explored the pressing social issues of the day.  He used a taxi drivers’ strike as the inspiration for his (and the Group Theatre’s) first breakout success, Waiting For Lefty.   This first play was followed by Awake and Sing!, Till The Day I Die, Paradise Lost, Golden Boy, Rocket To The Moon, Night Music, Clash By Night, The Big Knife and The Country Girl.  He also wrote many screenplays including the film adaptation of the novel Sweet Smell of Success.

            Bartlett Sher directed LCT’s 2006 Tony Award winning production of Odets’ Awake and Sing!.  His other productions for LCT, where he is Resident Director,  include this season’s Blood and Gifts, Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific (Tony Award for Best Director of a Musical) and The Light in the Piazza. His other NY productions include Prayer for My Enemy at Playwrights Horizons, Cymbeline, Waste, Don Juan and Pericles, all for Theatre for A New Audience, and the Metropolitan Opera productions of Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Les Contes d’Hoffman and Le Comte Ory.  Next season he will direct the MET’s new production of L’Elisir d’Amore.

Christopher Durang’s plays include A History of the American Film (Tony nomination), Sister Mary Explains It For You All (Obie Award), Beyond Therapy, Baby With The Bathwater, The Marriage of Bette and Boo (Obie Award and Guild Hull Warriner Award), Sex and Longing (produced by LCT), Laughing Wild, Betty’s Summer Vacation (Obie Award), Miss Witherspoon (2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist) and, most recently Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them

Nicholas Martin’s LCT credits include Saturn Returns, The New Century, Observe The Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, The Time of the Cuckoo, Chaucer in Rome.  He‘s collaborated with Christopher Durang on Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them and Betty’s Summer Vacation (Obie Award and Drama Desk nomination).  His other Broadway and off-Broadway credits include Butley, Match, Hedda Gabler, You Never Can Tell, The Rehearsal, Fully Committed, Full Gallop and Sophistry. 

This spring, LCT is presenting the Tony Award winning production of War Horse, co-produced with the National Theatre of Great Britain and Bob Boyett, adapted from the Michael Morpurgo novel by Nick Stafford with the Handspring Puppet Company and directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater,  Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, directed by Joe Mantello, on Broadway at the Booth Theatre and Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles, directed by Daniel Aukin in the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.  LCT is also a co-producer of the upcoming Broadway production of Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park, directed by Pam MacKinnon at the Walter Kerr Theatre.  In June, LCT will open its newest stage, the 131-seat Claire Tow Theater which will be the home of LCT3, with Slowgirl, a new play by Greg Pierce, directed by Anne Kauffman.

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