Theatre in Review: 4000 Miles (Lincoln Center Theatre)

Mary Louise Wilson doesn't just have great timing; she breathes it. As the heroine of Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles, she turns the simplest remarks -- "I was just making conversation," "You're in Manhattan," and "She's lost weight" -- into occasions for hilarity by saying them at the precisely the right moment, not one nanosecond too late or too early. Of course, there's more to it than that: There's a slight quiver of querulousness in her voice, a tone that suggests she has seen it all so you needn't bother trying to surprise her, as well as an underlying frustration that comes from living an existence that gets harder to negotiate every day. Acting students could benefit from studying the way she takes the most seemingly banal remark, teases out its subtext, and delivers it for maximum impact. The woman is a wonder; let's leave it at that.

Wilson is Vera Joseph, widow of Joe Joseph, a noted American Communist. (After the Revolution, Herzog's previous play, presented a kind of parallel-universe version of the Joseph family; in it, Vera was a fierce guardian of her late husband's reputation, not the quiet, skeptical soul we meet here.) She is awakened in the middle of the night by her grandson, Leo, who has traveled to Manhattan from Seattle by bike. (As Vera, not one for dewy sentiment, immediately notes, he needs a shower.) Leo, expertly portrayed by Gabriel Ebert, is a six-foot-tall bundle of good intentions, relentlessly cheerful and unthinkingly political correct. (When Vera, worried about his nutrition, tries to give him a banana, he gently reminds her that he only eats locally grown produce; no carbon footprint for him.) Vera is surprised to see Leo, because he has more or less disappeared for several weeks, leaving his family in a state of high anxiety. It's a measure of Daniel Aukin's sensitive staging that a single line from Vera ("You don't seem all right to me; you don't seem all right") sends a tremor of unspoken emotion around the theatre.

And, in fact, Vera is onto something. Leo had planned to make his cross-country bike trip accompanied by girlfriend, Bec; his best friend, Mika; and Mika's girlfriend. In the event, he made it alone, for reasons that only gradually become clear. In the meantime, Leo is adrift. Separated from Bec, refusing to speak to his parents in St. Paul, and unsure of his next move, he settles into Vera's apartment, becoming to his grandmother both an irritant and a necessity. Their bond is both tenuous and unbreakable; their differences are comically apparent, their love for each other heartbreakingly apparent.

Not all that much happens in 4000 Miles. Vera, who can't help speaking her mind, punctures many of her grandson's most grandiose notions with withering bursts of reality. Leo has a couple of fraught encounters with Bec, a serious, idealistic student at Columbia who thinks it's time for him to grow up. Missing Bec, he tries to play the field, leading to an amusingly misbegotten shot at a one-night stand with Amanda, a kooky Chinese-American design student. (Among other things, Amada, whose family escaped from their home country, doesn't appreciate being brought to the home of a famous Communist.) Leo and Vera trade personal secrets, although, when asked to name the man -- not either of her husbands -- who offered her real passion, Vera's lips are sealed.

Throughout 4000 Miles, Herzog combines cleverness with compassion, letting drop a series of details that speak volumes about Vera, Leo, and their larger family. Much of the comedy springs from a rueful awareness of the gap between Leo's innocent belief in a transformable world with Vera's daily struggle with her aging body and failing memory. (As objects disappear right under her nose, she often accuses Leo of stealing them; that this is so unlikely is proof of how frightened she is underneath. More than once, she vents her frustration at not being able to call up the words she wants to say. ) The more we learn about Leo -- his estrangement from his parents, his complicated affection for his adopted sister, his inability to move forward with his life -- the more he looks like a lost soul in training. It all builds to the moment when Leo speaks openly about the tragedy that has sent him running, an outpouring that Vera only half takes in, as she has removed her hearing aid for the night.

In its dryly amusing moments of character comedy, its clear-eyed view of what it is like to be at either the beginning or the end of one's life, and its probing comparison of Vera -- whose life has been shaped by leftist politics -- with Leo, whose idealism is free-floating and untethered to any systematic thinking, 4000 Miles is a moving snapshot of American life at this very moment. In addition to Wilson and Ebert, there are fine contributions from Zoë Winters as Bec -- who is proud to be one of the few women of her generation who speaks without ending every sentence with a question mark -- and Greta Lee, as Amanda, who approaches Leo's attempts at seduction with daunting athletic enthusiasm.

Aukin has not only gotten finely detailed performances from his cast, he has also overseen an equally sensitive production design. Lauren Helpern's set is a fine piece of photorealism, filled with exactly the kind of modern furniture Vera would have chosen 50 years ago; this neatly furnished interior, complete with tell-tale bric-a-brac, contrasts neatly with the utilitarian hallway just outside her door. Japhy Weidman's lighting is so carefully wrought that it allows for two late-night scenes to be played in a half-darkened room, helping to create strikingly melancholy tableaux. Also fine are Kaye Voyce's costumes and Ryan Rumery's sound design and incidental music.

Just as 4000 Miles introduces us to the voices of youth and experience, this production of 4000 Miles showcases the work of one of our most exciting young playwrights and one of our most accomplished older actresses. In more ways than one, it's a thing of paradoxes: its sensibility is delicate, but the truths on which it is founded are as solid as rock.--David Barbour