Wharf 1 Theatre, February 7
8/10
Vera hasn’t changed the name on the buzzer for her New York apartment in the 10 years since her husband died. It still reads “Joe Joseph”. Her grandson, Leo, meanwhile has just cycled 4,000 miles, from Seattle to New York via Kansas. Ostensibly he’s on the move, and she’s unbending. But, despite the 70-year age difference, they’re close in many ways.
It’s not a blood bond: Vera married Joe after he’d already had Leo’s future mother, but that doesn’t dilute the grandmother/grandson love. Besides, they share another bond that scorns generations, mobility and inertia. They’re both confused by life. Although ferociously independent, Vera’s just clinging on as she marks time in her 90s, and Leo, having lost his cycling buddy to a horrific accident in Kansas, hit New York to find his girlfriend less than enthused.
It’s a joy and a privilege to see Nancye Hayes return to Sydney Theatre Company, performing Vera in Amy Herzog’s multilayered 2009 play. Hayes ages herself perfectly to fully inhabit this spiky, fascinating creature, adding extra glow to the inherent warmth, and sharpening the inherent acerbity. She makes it credible that Vera can call someone stupid, and be forthright rather than nasty.
Such commendable casting would count for little had director Kenneth Moraleda not found a Leo capable of enunciating the muddy banks and backwaters of their relationship, as well as the flower-lined rambling paths – for Leo and Vera are profound catalysts in each other’s lives. Looking rather older than Herzog’s specified 21, and after some initial nervy bumps for both actors, Shiv Palekar slipped easily into Leo’s jumpy zone where he can be the instigator of affection, while viewing Vera’s age as some alien land divorced from his own future. Both Hayes and Palekar give us people we like, despite their flaws, for their capacity to accept, forgive, love and help.
The play engenders the nagging feeling that perhaps Herzog initially flirted with a two-hander, before it got away from her, and other characters, who could quite possibly have been merely discussed, gate-crashed the stage. The first is Bec, the girlfriend who gives Leo the flick. She, too, is confused, and while Ariadne Sgouros makes Bec’s unpredictable leaps in mood and perspective, she sometimes works a little hard at them.
The second is Amanda (Shirong Wu), whom Leo invites back to Vera’s from a bar. A night’s sex looks a certain, until the Chinese-American sees Vera’s communist books – and then sees Vera, herself. Wu is amusing twisting between Amanda’s drunken playfulness, come-hither sexiness and rich-girl hang-ups in her outpouring of thought bubbles riddled with “like”.
Jeremy Allen’s very literal set catches the sense of an abode that’s been Vera’s for decades, and will be her last, aided by Kelsey Lee’s lighting. Jessica Dunn’s music, meanwhile, is simply gorgeous, mixing New York jazziness with more pastel hues, that, like the characters, stutter in expressing their true meaning.
Until March 23.
https://www.sydneytheatre.com.au/whats-on/productions/2025/4000-miles