4000 Miles

Photo: Erin Baiano

Amy Herzog's 4000 Miles is a quiet, warm, delicate little play, inhabited by very real characters. It is also seamless, in the way that not very many plays are: there is no big, stagy moment near the end when a character turns to the light and reveals a big secret. Emotional healing does not clearly begin as the final curtain comes down. There is no carefully-paced lead-up to a stunning, shocking conclusion. No one learns about themselves or others in a way that is particularly big, or profound. Vera is old, but she does not die at the end; Leo is young, but he does not die--in an ironic twist!--either. There is, in short, no big catharsis; despite the largeness that the play's title implies, not a whole lot of big happens as 4000 Miles runs its course. What makes up the most of 4000 Miles is, instead, a whole mess of subtle, graceful, carefully understated realizations and confusions, emotional gains and setbacks, triumphs and disappointments. They make for a particularly satisfying visit to the Mitzi Newhouse Theater.

Amy Herzog is too interested in keeping it real to force anything on her characters except the general ebbs and flows of daily life, even during slightly trying or confusing times. Thus, her characters interact, bicker, make up, connect, disconnect, reconnect, and help or hurt each other in tiny, lingering ways as a few days--maybe a few weeks--go by. The fact that spending time with them is moving and interesting, that they are so complicated and flawed and likeable, and that the intermissionless show moves along so quickly despite the many silences, mundane conversations, and unanswered questions is a testament to Herzog and the fine, fine cast.

Most of the conversations--as well as the halting, heavy silences--take place between Leo (a wiry, tightly-wound, excellent Gabriel Ebert) and his grandmother, Vera Joseph (Mary Louise Wilson, as close to perfect as is possible). Leo, a particularly lost 20-something, has just completed a cross-country bike-ride that he began with a close friend and completed alone. He shows up unannounced at Vera's Manhattan apartment at 3:00 AM, filthy, exhausted, and just a little too upbeat and enthusiastic, given the circumstances. Vera, whose occasional memory lapses and inability to remember certain words has in no way deprived her of whip-smart insight, takes pains not to push Leo to talk, but merely sends him to take a shower and then to get some sleep.

As the two settle in, we learn about them both through conversation and silence. They have plenty in common, despite the obvious generational differences: both are politically leftist and socially very liberal; both struggle with Jane, who is Leo's mom and Vera's stepdaughter. Both are enormously self-centered and small-minded in some ways, and just as enormously sympathetic, kindhearted, and open to the world in others. And, most importantly, both are in mourning: Vera for most of the people she knows, who seem to die on her daily, and Leo for the friend he began his cross-country bike-ride with.

They're both in mourning for the past, too. Vera has long ago realized that life doesn't quite work out the way one is convinced it will when one is idealistic and young; Leo is only just beginning to struggle with the ways that his ideologies--and the friendships he's formed around them--have begun to crumble, to betray him, to die. Leo's girlfriend, Bec (Zoe Winters, rock-solid), who lives in Brooklyn, has begun to think more seriously about college, and to ponder a future that doesn't necessarily include him. Leo, stung by the rejection, is nevertheless far more perturbed by the realization that he, too, is eventually going to need to put away childish things and begin the painful, hugely daunting process of becoming a grownup. Scenes near the end of the play involving a particularly ditzy, drunk artist (Greta Lee, dead-on) and Vera's unseen, elderly neighbor strongly imply that Leo is already on his way to becoming a perfectly fine grownup; while this might reassure the audience--I was certainly happy to know it--it does nothing for Leo, who hasn't arrived at adulthood yet, and whose growing pains haven't abated by the final curtain.

Herzog refuses to tidy everything up for us by the end of her play, which leaves her characters more or less the same as they were when we found them: a little damaged, a little sad, but no more or less so than anyone else. It's no spoiler to note that Vera and Leo are ultimately going to move on, too: Leo will not be crashing at his grandmother's place forever, and while this makes Vera very sad, it also pleases her. Neither she nor Leo is happy about the act of letting go, even though they both know and accept that ultimately, life is just as much about embracing as it is about releasing the embrace.

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark

If you wanted to explain the concept of "range," you could do worse than to compare Lynn Nottage's current comedy, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, to her recent devastating drama, Ruined. Few playwrights, if any, can write so effectively, so honestly, and so beautifully at both ends of the theatre spectrum. Certainly not O'Neill or Miller, both of whom veered toward the ponderous. Not Williams (though he considered Streetcar funny). Albee has played with humor, but has written no flat-out comedies. Ditto Kushner. Only Michael Frayn comes to mind, with his Noises Off and Copenhagen, but while that's quite a range, it still isn't as impressive as the distance from Vera Stark to Ruined. (Of course, there is that Shakespeare guy.)

It's the early 1930s, and Vera Stark (the amazing and beautiful Sanaa Lathan) works as a maid for the ravingly self-centered, mediocre actress Gloria Mitchell (played with great elan by Stephanie J. Block). Vera also wants to act, but there is little opportunity for African-American performers. Over time, both Vera and Gloria find out just what they are willing to do to be on the silver screen. Rounding out the story are a 1973 talk show appearance by Vera and a 2003 symposium on her career.

Nottage mixes satire, compassion, and serious commentary on racism into a hysterically funny, ultimately touching stew. While her satire can be quite pointed (the people speaking at the symposium are etched in acid), her writing is anchored in compassion and a sweet sense of the ridiculousness of being human. The show is well-directed by Jo Bonney, and among the other performers Daniel Breaker and Karen Olivo deserve particular kudos.

The brilliant Ruined was arguably the most upsetting show I've ever seen; Nottage calibrated the emotional trajectory of the show perfectly. Vera Stark is often delightfully silly, with dips into high-stakes reality, and Nottage's calibration is again perfect. It's as though an elegant ballet dancer turned out to be a great football receiver. It's that range thing, and it's amazing.

($56 seats, side front orchestra)

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark

I saw Lynn Nottage's new play this afternoon--ironically, two years to the day after I first saw her Pulitzer-Prize winning Ruined. In those two years, rarely a day has passed when I haven't considered the power of that play. Nottage is a writer of rare talent and clarity; her language is often simple and restrained, and the audience member is keenly aware that each word she puts in her character's mouth has been carefully considered. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is easily the best American play I've seen in over a year, and Jo Bonney's fast-paced, attractive production is its perfect compliment. It also benefits from an unforgettable, beautifully realized performance from Sanaa Lathan in the title role; were this production in a Broadway house, the Tony would be hers in a walk. (This fine actress only appears in New York about once a decade; Ms. Lathan, please make your appearances more regular!) The entire cast is wonderful, but special mention goes to Kimberly Hebert Gregory, at once hilarious (a sample line: "He won't send you out unless you give him a blow job and twenty-five dollars...and I'm not about to give him twenty-five dollars!") and keenly aware that 1930s Hollywood only sees her as a representative of the mammy archetype.

($34 youth tickets; E104. Seen at the matinee on 6/4/11)

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark

What a difference a director makes.

When By the Way, Meet Vera Stark was done at the Second Stage, directed by Jo Bonney, it was hysterically funny, yet hard-hitting and even heart-breaking. (Review here.) In its current incarnation at the Signature Theatre, directed by Kamilah Forbes, it is obvious, overdone, and totally lacking in emotional texture. And the second act is tedious.

The New York Times make it a critics' pick. I have no idea why.

Wendy Caster
($35 ticket; second row center)

4000 Miles

Photo: Erin Baiano

There is a great distance between any two people, not just across generations -- Leo (Gabriel Ebert) shows up at his grandmother Vera's (Mary Louise Wilson's) door after going AWOL on a bike trip across America -- but across a gamut of emotional feelings, refracted through Leo's slightly unnatural feelings for his unseen adopted sister (voiced, I believe, by Greta Lee, who appears in the play as an immature, art-freak of a one-night-stand) and his almost unbearable love for his girlfriend Bec (Zoe Winters). Unlike Amy Herzog's previous work, After the Revolution, 4000 Miles doesn't appear to be interested in bridging that distance, so much as in quietly acknowledging it, a task that director Daniel Aukin (This) is well-suited for.

However, for all the naturalistic charm, tenderness, and sweetness of 4000 Miles, the concluding thought is that Herzog appears to have traveled largely on a treadmill. That moment of insight, of connection? It never comes, and with both Bec and Leo running away (to one degree or another) at the end of the play and with the spectre of a life-well-lived-but-also-almost-over hanging over Vera, it feels as if a second act is missing (and this in a play that's already a bit long at a hundred intermissionless minutes). The final monologue -- a sort of eulogy -- suggests that we're not meant to know everything; the catch-22 of Herzog's talented writing is that we want to.

[Read full review here]

($40.00 ticket; H109)

Wendy's Top Ten of 2011

2011 continued my personal trend of seeing many more Off-Off-Broadway shows and considerably fewer Broadway Shows, with Off-Broadway holding steady. In fact, of over 70 shows, only eight were on Broadway. And this year, it's not just the insanely high price of tickets keeping me away--it's also the lackluster offerings. Perhaps my life will be forever diminished because I never saw Bonnie and Clyde or Mountaintop or the latest Anything Goes, but I'm willing to risk that, particularly because Off-Off- and Off-Broadway boast such high-quality offerings.

Here, then, in alphabetical order, is my top ten list, with links to the reviews:

Chris Wight, Lori E. Parquet, and Liz Douglas in Dog Act
(Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum)

• Angels in America (I never actually reviewed this--I saw it late in the run, and so much had been written about it that I felt I had little to add. I will say this though: it blew me away.) 
• Born Bad
• By the Way, Meet Vera Stark
• Dog Act
• Goliath: A Choreopoem
• Hello Again
• The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures
• Let Me Entertain You: Laura Benanti at Feinstein's
• The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller
• Peter and the Starcatcher

Daniel Morgan Shelley and David King in
The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller
(Photo: Lia Chang)

Honorable mention: Be a Good Little Widow, Benefactors, Chicago, David Parsons Dance, The Dream of the Burning Boy, Orpheus & Euridice, Room, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Violet (NYU)

Clybourne Park

Really? Clybourne Park? This is the play that won the Pulitzer? That has a good chance at the Tony? That is receiving raves? Really?

Let's take the depiction of the deaf character Betsy to represent the whole play. Betsy is used for all of the usual cheap laughs. People yell and enunciate at her. She misses exactly what author Bruce Norris needs her to miss to set up predictable laugh lines; she is a comic device rather than a character. At one point Betsy's husband is upset that someone has used a curse word in front of her. The other person says, "but she's deaf," and then says "fuck you" to her. Not understanding, she smiles and gives a little wave. And the audience roars.

But it's already been established that she is good at lip-reading. And there are few phrases as easy to lip-read as "fuck you" as anyone who watches sports can tell you. It's a completely cheap joke, feeble, untrue to the character, and lame. And, like I said, it's an apt synecdoche for the whole play. (But the audience did roar.)

The very premise of the first act is unconvincing. It's 1959, and Russ and Bev are unaware that they have sold their house to an African-American family (we know that they are the Younger family from Raisin in the Sun, though it could be any African-American family). Their racist neighbor Karl begs them to stop the sale.  Russ and Bev's African-American maid and her husband are pulled into the fray (based on the dreadful these-people-are-staying-in-a-conversation-they-would-have-left-long-ago trope). There ensues a series of exchanges breath-taking in their lack of subtlety and nuance. The racist neighbor does everything but twirl a mustache. Bev, played as a cartoon by Christina Kirk, flails around and flaps her arms (literally), and her interactions with her maid are ham-fisted in their depiction of white ignorance, entitlement, and neediness. Any ten-second piece of Caroline, or Change reveals more about the race relations of past decades, and with humor, compassion, and complexity.

The second act is less painful to sit through but also less believable. While the Act 1 is far too one-dimensional, it deals with a reality that did exist. The second act features a few characters who come across as actual human beings, but the dialogue and situations are unconvincing and heavy-handed. Norris seems to think that having people make jokes about anal sex and tampons, or call each other cunts, is enough to make a play realistic and hard-hitting (and many critics seem to agree). But without an honest examination of genuine people, Norris's writing comes across as a middle-schooler trying to act cool.

Act 2, which takes place in 2009, reverses the situation of Act 1 as whites are now buying into a black neighborhood. They want to tear down the house from Act 1 and put in its place a building out of proportion to its surroundings. The white couple, their lawyer, a black couple who live nearby, and a mediator are trying to work out a solution that pleases everyone, but they all talk over and around each other (the various characters' ability to go off on tangents is one of the few convincing aspects of the play).

The conversation eventually comes around to race, but Norris seems unwilling to address the actual issues, preferring to fall back on the boring we're-all-savages-underneath trope. Why couldn't they have actually discussed what was going on? Why couldn't the black couple say, "If you gentrify this neighborhood, the people who have lived here for decades will get priced out"? Why couldn't the white couple say, "But we have the right to live wherever we want"? Instead, they tell racist jokes and call each other names and blah, blah, blah.

Another problem is that Clybourne Park has five whites and only two blacks, particularly since the black characters are too similar from act to act: she's the one who's willing to fight, he's the one who wants to make nice. The white people get a variety of personality types--albeit mostly one-dimensional--but the black people get a much smaller palette.

I find it quite sad that Lynn Nottage's excellent play, By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, which dealt with racial issues with subtlety and genuine humor, never made it to Broadway, while this dumb and predictable play is knee deep in kudos. But I'm not surprised. Clybourne Park establishes a white "them" that we white people in the audience can feel superior to and laugh at. It gives us the opportunity to congratulate ourselves that we would never be that stupid, racist, etc. With its cheap writing, it allows us a cheap out.

(tdf ticket, 6th row mezz first act, about 10th row orchesta second act)