Sigourney Weaver has a new Broadway role, but it’s likely a very familiar part.
The actress is playing an aging movie star in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike , which is getting buzz for the Tony Awards. The play is about three middle-age siblings and their difficult relationships. One of those is Masha, a mean-spirited older actress who returns home with a new 29-year-old boyfriend to sell the house and kick out her other siblings.
“Riffing on some of Anton Chekov’s most time-tested themes, Christopher Durang proves in his hysterically funny and surprisingly affecting new romp, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike , that whether you’re in 19th Century Russia or 21st Century Pennsylvania, the human condition never changes,” producers bill the play .
Though the actress is on the back end of her career and self-centered, the 63-year-old Weaver said she loves the role and never hesitated about taking it.
It helps that the part was written by her friend, playwright Christopher Durang, with Weaver in mind.”I guess I thought I was different enough from Masha, that I would be fine. And I’m very fond of her,” Sigourney Weaver said. Durang said he was excited for the chance to pull Weaver out of her acting comfort zone.
“I thought that if, for any reason, Sigourney was free, it would be fun to have her play this self-centered actress,” he says. “She doesn’t always get to play these grandiose roles. She has such a sense of intelligence to her.”
Sigourney Weaver and Christopher Durang go back a long way. They graduated together from the Yale School of Drama in 1974, and went on to act in plays together afterward.
“It is fun to have a friendship that has lasted so long,” he says. somewhat terrifying.”
Sigourney Weaver will find out next week the Tony Awards like the play as much as critics have. The nominations will be announced next week.
