Tag: Kanata Theatre 2015

4000 Miles: Leads rather than script make 4000-mile journey worthwhile

4000 Miles: Leads rather than script make 4000-mile journey worthwhile

Book-ended by the deaths of two unseen characters, 4000 Miles by Amy Herzog focuses on the healing wrought for Leo through the sometimes fractious relationship with his grandmother.

Both characters are based on two of the playwright’s relatives — her grandmother and a cousin. Individual scenes in this drama spiced with comic lines are engaging, apart from a barely credible sequence, in which grandson and grandmother get high on marijuana. (Drug-taking and drunk scenes are frequently repulsive or offensive and, except in rare cases, do little or nothing to add to plot or character.)

In this case, the pot-smoking segment underlines that, without strong performances and chemistry between the two leads, 4000 Miles would not be a journey worth undertaking. (It also makes it all the more surprising that Herzog’s episodic 2011 play was an award winner and a Pulitzer Prize finalist.)

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