Palm Beach Dramaworks opens its season with a touching dramedy, Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles. What the play might lack in weighty dramatic conflict, it makes up for in the heartfelt contrasts of generations. As a character-driven play it leans on outstanding execution for its success, and it could not have found a better home than PBD’s production and their casting expertise.
Patricia Conolly plays the feisty, unpredictable 91-year-old Vera who is unexpectedly visited by her 21-year-old grandson in the middle of the night, Leo. He had just biked 4000 miles. She doesn’t hear the doorbell at first as she doesn’t have her hearing aid in, and once she answers, Leo can’t understand her as her hand hides her mouth because she doesn’t have her teeth in as well. What we've got here is failure to communicate, so we already have a comical baseline to work with.
Vera has lived in a Greenwich Village rent controlled apartment since the beginning of time, and although she has memory lapses (her favorite phrase for filling in the blanks being “waddayacallit”) her living experiences and the fact that she is a socialist from another era makes for memorable and poignant moments. Her life now consists of checking on her neighbor, and vice versa, the elderly offstage character of Ginny (“that way if one of us turns up our toes it won’t take until we start smelling to figure it out”).
The sudden appearance of her grandson, Leo, who during the trip lost his biking companion and close friend Micah to an accident (crashing into a truck filled with Tyson chickens), sets up the primary story. He needs to heal from that and other coming of age maladies, and Vera needs companionship, lacking in her life since her second husband, Joe, died.
Leo is played by Gabriell Salgado with a larger-than-life presence on the stage, his pulsating youth, and urgency of living on full display. But he has not only lost his best friend, he is estranged from his mother and has a sister quandary. Furthermore, his relationship with Bec, his girlfriend, played by Stephanie Vasquez, is on the rocks. Rounding out the cast and the patchy plot is Amanda, played by Isabella Chang, a young woman Leo brings to Grandma’s apartment, hoping to get her in bed.
The four actors are making their Palm Beach Dramaworks debuts.
 |
| Patricia Conolly and Gabriell Salgado photo by Alicia Donelan |
Conolly’s Vera, especially when juxtaposed to Salgado’s Leo, is frail, diminutive in stature, unsure in her speech (her complaint “finding my words” resonate), and forgetful (“I can’t find my checkbook!”). But she has the wisdom of age and Conolly handles the infirmaries, as well as her opinions with a bold frankness, and the resulting laughs with aplomb.
Vera, on coming from a funeral for the last of the octogenarians she was friends with, amusingly comments to Leo: “he was a rat, very aggressive, he used to make passes at me with his wife sitting right there. She had Alzheimer’s so she didn’t mind, but I did. Even so he was the last one and I don’t feel very happy about it.” So much for ambivalent sentimentality. We should all be lucky enough to have a grandma with Conolly’s spirit.
If the name Patricia Conolly doesn’t resonate, she has had a seven-decade theatrical life, playing leading roles in theatres throughout the world, but mostly on stage, not film, and thus her relative anonymity, but here’s an opportunity to see one of our finest actresses still displaying her prodigious talent.
Gabriell Salgado, playing Leo, responds to Vera’s lament with “do you want a hug from a hippie?” Salgado wholeheartedly captures his character’s crisis as well his grandmother’s aging issues. They’re both responding to rusty family ties which eventually bond them in trust, healing one another. We witness the intimacy which eventually develops between the chasm of generations
Various subplots, those between unseen characters, such as Vera’s love/hate relationship with her neighbor Ginny, and Leo’s conflicts with his mother and his adopted sister provide more insight into the puzzle of the main characters’ lives.
Leo’s interaction with on stage Bec and Amanda, although secondary, clue us in on Leo’s motivations and maturation. The playwright leans heavily on these exchanges for humor and pathos. Stephanie Vasquez performance as Bec is steeped in anger and accusations. Her later interaction with Vera as the play evolves changes her harsh judgement about Leo, Vera amusingly commenting “men do things out of stupidity.” Vasquez finally displays a more loving side.
 |
| Stephanie Vazquez and Gabriell Salgado photo by Alicia Donelan |
Amanda is a comic interlude, and quirky Isabella Chang makes the best of those moments, but it is here that we get to know some key elements, Leo saying “my best friend died this summer. We were biking across the country together and he died. That’s why I’m here. Because I don’t know where else to be.” One of the funniest scenes in the play happens late that night when Vera suddenly appears out of her bedroom in her wraithlike nightgown, interrupting a lovemaking session on the couch, Amanda recoiling and screaming, thinking she saw a ghost.
 |
| Gabriell Salgado and Isabel Chang photo by Alicia Donelan |
J. Barry Lewis directs this delicate, but occasionally contrived play, by punching up the dramatic moments with his excellent cast and landing all the comedic elements with a sure hand.
One of the best reasons to see any PBD production is their attention to those technical details theatergoers will surely notice, ones that as are as important as the acting. Scenic design by PBD newcomer Bert Scott perfectly portrays Vera’s NYC’s rent-controlled apartment (I should know; I’ve lived in three). Books are intrinsic to Vera’s past left-wing life and now that she is aged, so are post-it notes. Although the play takes place in the 2000’s, the set is from Vera’s heyday in the 1960s, rotary phone and all.
Kirk Bookman’s lighting design delineates the time of the day, and there is one extended but affecting scene between Vera and Leo performed in the beautiful, muted glow from the streetlights as Leo pours out his heart to granny, with a comic rimshot at the end of the scene.
Sound design by Roger Arnold introduces some original piano music between scenes and at times the sounds of NYC, garbage trucks backing up, the ubiquitous city sirens, or barking dogs in the building, one crescendo of the latter a harbinger of a turn in the play.
Resident Costume Designer, Brian O’Keefe, has lots to work with here, the time period and ten scenes in the play, many requiring fast costume changes by Vera in particular (who requires nine different costumes). These are everyday garbs of the 2000 era including well-worn nightgowns and cover ups for Vera from her earlier days, everything suitable and contributing to the look and feel of the play.
The journey ends on a bittersweet twist, like an unresolved piece of music, but still, clearly the two main characters can now part, changed by one another, and better prepared to face an uncertain future.
