A generation gap, slowly bridged, in '4000 Miles'
NEW YORK (AP) — For Vera Joseph, there may be one good thing about being 91 years old, and that's the spacious, book-filled, and (most importantly) rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan's Greenwich Village where she's lived for decades.
But everything else is a pain in the butt. Mentally she's sharp as a nail, but she needs a hearing aid and dentures, shakes when she holds a cup of tea, has trouble with the lock on the front door, and can't come up with the right words: "I just hate not being able to find my words," she says. "I feel like an idiot half the time."
That these frustrations are expressed without an ounce of self-pity, merely a keen self-awareness, is just one aspect of the brilliance of Mary Louise Wilson's performance in "4000 Miles," which opened Monday night at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. Rarely have the indignities of aging been so sensitively portrayed onstage.
Of course, Wilson's touching and understated portrayal owes much to the deft writing of playwright Amy Herzog, who has said she based Vera on her own grandmother.
But one of Herzog's triumphs here is that Vera, with all her specific eccentricities, immediately reminds us of own grandmothers. Ever stayed with yours, and been harangued for something as minute as a loose faucet knob? You know she loves you and wants you there. But she's so set in her ways, she can't help herself.
"4000 Miles," which had an earlier life last season (as now, under the surehanded direction of Daniel Aukin) as part of Lincoln Center Theater's LCT3 initiative, centers on one relationship: That of Vera and her 21-year-old grandson, Leo. The young man, played with a lovely freshness by Gabriel Ebert, has shown up unexpectedly at 3 a.m. one morning after a cross-country bike trip.
That age gap of 70 years can be daunting. Leo asks for money to go to a wall-climbing gym. "More than FIFTY dollars... to climb a wall?" Vera exclaims. But earlier in the same scene, she's noted matter-of-factly that a box of condoms has fallen from his backpack. "I was glad to see you carried those, and surprised they weren't opened," she says.
Happily for Vera, age can bring a refreshing freedom to say whatever the heck you please. "Your father never did anything for me in bed," she tells Leo at one point. Actually she means his grandfather — both her confusion and her frank assessment of her sex life are very funny. So are her almost affectionate anecdotes, recounted to Leo's on-off girlfriend, Bec, of her husband's various infidelities.
There is a sad undercurrent to the play: Leo, we learn, is suffering after his best friend's death — he was there when it happened. It's not until late in the play that we find out the details, in a long monologue tenderly delivered by Ebert. Watch out for Vera's reaction, after all this: It's one of playwright Herzog's funniest moments.
Herzog didn't just base Vera on her grandmother: She based her apartment on her grandmother's, too, and you can tell: It is beautifully realized (the terrific set design is by Lauren Helpern), filled with old books and art objects and plates and vases and end tables that are actually file cabinets.
Though "4000 Miles" is essentially a two-character drama, it features nice performances by Zoe Winters, who plays Bec with an appealing straightforwardness, and Greta Lee, amusing as a potential one-night stand for Leo.
Can a 21-year-old hippie and his 91-year-old Greenwich Village liberal grandma, with her rotary phone and no teeth, find happiness? Maybe not for long, but the simple and understated manner in which this play ends is startlingly satisfying.
It will probably make you want to call your grandmother — or your grandchild.
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Online: http://www.lct.org
