Tana Hicken and Grant Harrison in ‘4000 Miles’ (Studio Theatre/Scott Suchman)
Forgive the zeigeistiness, but watching 4000 Miles at Studio Theatre can feel a little like watching HBO’s Girls.
Oh, now, stop groaning and bear with me.
Leo (Grant Harrison), the equally lost and assured 21-year-old who goes to live with his grandmother Vera (Tana Hicken) in Amy Herzog’s lovely piece about cross-generational understanding, stirs up—at least, in this reviewer, currently standing on the precipice of 30—the same awkward mixture of recognition, revulsion and bemusement I’ve gotten used to from Lena Dunham.
Of course, Herzog is more thoughtful and less flashy than Dunham. But she can be just as funny. And good thing, because with her newest commission, “Belleville,” is currently playing off-Broadway through the end of this month, ensuring her continued ascent as an emerging playwright. So there’s more to look forward to.
Leo has just gotten off his bike after a scarring trip across America, from Minneapolis “by way of Seattle” to New York City. Roughened from the journey, he stumbles in the wee hours into his grandmother’s kitchen.
This first scene is a visual testament to the play and its themes: Standing there frozen for an uncomfortable length of time, hand clasped across her mouth, Vera’s long nightgown and braid look like something out of Little Rent Controlled Apartment on the Prairie.
In contrast, there’s Leo, who with his curly, wild hair and deep, dark eyes, is the prototypical Gen-Y manic pixie dream boy: The kind that cite Kerouac and Kundera, experiment with hallucinogens and are as confidently inaccessible as they are romantic.
At one point Leo tearfully recites Rumi’s “There is a Field” in the effort to re-engage his love interest, Becca. Run, girlfriend, run! I thought.
But the collection of delightful Leoisms goes on and on: “DUDE, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says to his grandma “Love it. Teach it what you know,” he says, handing Becca a pumpkin he picked up at the community garden.
Confidently directed by Studio Theatre founder Joy Zinoman, the play could have just settled for comfortably witty repartee about how different Vera and Leo are, and been an enjoyable experience.
Hey, the young guy doesn’t ever do laundry! The old lady doesn’t understand computers! (Side note: this is the first time I’ve seen a Skype scene play out on stage; I suspect it won’t be the last.)
However, beneath Leo’s hipster bullshit rhetoric and Vera’s Jessica Tandy-like flusteredness, both characters are united in the struggle against grief and trauma. For Leo, that’s the sudden, disturbing death of his best friend and perhaps equally traumatic push into adulthood.
For Vera, one of the “last of the octogenarians,” it’s the dying off of everyone around her, and the gradual deterioration of her mind.
The two leads are spectacular.
As Leo, Harrison embodies a squirm-inducing authenticity that makes it seem like he was just plucked up out of a climbing gym or Tame Impala concert and plopped down into this play by that hand of God illustration in Monty Python’s Flying Circus.
As Vera—whose bookshelves contain tome after tome of communist literature, and who wears her progressivism as proudly on her sleeve as the New York Times sitting on top of her shopping basket—Hicken is a marvel to watch. The emotional pools of her face shift and change with every line.
She will undoubtedly remind you of someone who has a deep place in your heart, whether that’s your grandma, your mother or an old teacher. And as her confusion mounts, Leo handles her agony with patience more often than not, counteracting his persistent entitlement with something deeper.
This is a play that approaches but never succumbs to the schmaltzy sentimentality far too common in works about aging and family.
When Vera returns from a funeral, for instance, she blurts out that the dead man “was a rat. Made passes at me in front of his wife. She had Alzheimer’s so she didn’t care. But I did!”
A joy of many shades, 4000 Miles hits a tenor of both acidic observation and soft, gentle resonance.
***
4000 Miles runs through April 8 at the Studio Theatre (1501 14th Street NW). Tickets $59.
