‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’ revel in dysfunction at South Coast Repertory

Please, can someone explain to me why this is not the age of Christopher Durang?

Of American playwrights of the past few decades Durang’s careening and calculating voice has been squarely at the intersection where black comedy meets anger and self-absorption, a fuel currently propelling social media at such levels that in 2018 we seem condemned to wallow in it.

His 2013 Tony Award winning Best Play “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” opened this weekend at South Coast Repertory. If its thematic sting is a bit mild by Durang standards through the decades,  the fusion of dysfunctional Chekhovian characters  — they describe themselves that way — to recognizable American lives, makes an audience laugh a lot and squirm a little as few other playwrights could dream it up.

For instance: during the first seven minutes of the play, Vanya and Sonia, in note-perfect performances by Tim Bagley and Jenna Cole, bicker about coffee, lament their dead parents having ruined their lives by saddling them with odd names and muse about selling their house instead of cleaning up the shards of two coffee cups one of them has smashed in a snit.

During this sequence I counted 17 laughs from a close to full house at the Julianne Argyros Stage. Durang in the hands of the right director does that for us.

That’s about all the plot I plan to pass along because the logic of a Durang storyline darts around like a honey-drunk bee, any and all spoilers rendered futile.

Let’s just say that if you aren’t intrigued by why a mid 50s woman wearing a Snow White costume who travels with a Hollywood boy-toy in his 20s decides to sell the aforementioned house on the advice of an unseen personal assistant named Hootie Pie, well, you probably won’t care what happens anyway.

From Durang’s first play in 1979, “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For You” — in Boston some folks tried to embody “banned in Boston” by unsuccessfully attempting to squelch his biting jab at Catholicism — the playwright has peered skeptically at serious themes such as child abuse, religion and homosexuality through a fractured lens ground from satire, parody and absurdity.

This fusion established his as a voice to be reckoned with or, at least, worth paying attention to.

Following a prolific and often impressive run of plays through the 1980s into the ‘90s, general audiences and critics seemed to lose interest.

But in 2013, “Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike” redirected Durang’s trajectory. Many critics remembered all over again to appreciate his adroit shifts in tone and offbeat characters. A successful off-Broadway run led to a Broadway transfer with David Hyde-Pierce and Sigourney Weaver above the title.

Star power will get you so far, but absurdist humor can be tiresome if it isn’t shaped by a keenly attuned director pacing the irrational laughter so that audiences aren’t quickly exhausted by it.

To make sure madcap doesn’t wear out its welcome, SCR wisely assigned the task to vaunted L.A.-based director Bart DeLorenzo. Most recently, DeLorenzo whipped up antic glee in December on this stage with Sandra Tsing Loh’s rueful, seasonal memory-play “Sugar Plum Fairy.”

Here DeLorenzo treats the material with a beautiful combination of energy and discretion. These characters’ quirks are earnest and heartfelt, there can’t be a shred of irony. DeLorenzo makes sure there is no fatal wink-wink nudge-nudge-iness from an impeccable cast that feels like a veteran repertory ensemble (could they please put on Chekhov’s real “Uncle Vanya” on stage-dark Monday nights?).

The actors prove equally at home with abrupt animation and fitful resignation. As Masha, the flamboyant B-level Hollywood diva who swoops in on Vanya and Sonia, sucking all the oxygen from every room, Pamela J. Gray knits narcissism, fitful jealousy and despairing self-obsession, never missing a stitch.

Svetlana Efremova’s Cassandra — part-time cleaning lady, full-time non-stop forecaster of doom imported directly from Greek mythology — serves up non-stop prognostications with a thick slab of Slavic intensity that instantly lights things up whenever she bustles on stage.

Jose Moreno Brooks’ Spike elevates flexing, posing and hunkiness to a triumph of millennial obliviousness; his reverse strip-tease is a hilarious public display to behold.

All the actors go through their paces in a wonderful setting. Keith Mitchell’s lovely silhouetted scenic design, with an expansive country house interior echoing a Chekhovian dacha, is artfully framed by nature, banishing what, at times over the years, can be the claustrophobic quotient of the Argyros’ stage.

Raquel Barreto’s first outing costuming an SCR production is a pleasing mix, from schlubby/dowdy for Vanya and Sonya to California Cool for Sonia and Spike.

Near the end of the play is a long, tricky monologue that runs a good eight minutes. It is a mountain of nostalgic, stream-of-consciousness rhetoric for Vanya to climb.

In productions elsewhere there was an acerbic quality to what previous actors did with it, but Bagley miraculously reaches a gentle boil, never too loud or harsh. There is a mournful quality as his character struggles to convey a declaration of loss at the shared cultural interests and memories that Vanya feels have vanished as mid 20th century America itself disappeared.

In 2013 productions, this scene was played like a self-centered complaint. Here it is a baffled lament, one that ultimately lands gently, almost a soothing balm.

Perhaps that’s best in 2018.

‘Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike’

Where: Julianne Argyros Stage, South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

When: Continues Tuesday, Oct. 9-Sunday, Oct. 21. 7:45 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:45 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays

Tickets: regular performances, $31-86

Information: 714-708-5555; scr.org