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Regional Reviews: St. Louis 4000 Miles Also see Richard's review of Café Chanson
By that time you'll feel you somehow know everything that's bound to happen from here on out, anyway. Inevitably, critics will liken it to a sitcom, which is not an unreasonable comparison in terms of 4000 Miles' basic structure. But it seems richer and wiser, staring over the abyss in a way that'll never sell a set of tires, or a box of diet snacks either. Dan McCabe is the unkempt 20-something who's nearly completed a bike ride across the country, and Rita Gardner is his grandmother, brandishing a minor annoyance for any occasion and a word-retrieval problem that is quietly harrowing, considering her otherwise spry nature. He's not quite made it to the Atlantic Ocean on his eastward trek, and she's not quite made it to where we're all headed anyway. All your television-watching experience will rush to fill-in the blanks, especially when Lisa Helmi Johanson gamely bundles in as a drunken one night stand. But even that turns into an admirably grisly moment of live theater, thanks to director Jane Page, who is relentlessly faithful to even the most underwritten of playwright Herzog's roles. Katie McClellan is great as Mr. McCabe's worried ex-girlfriend, watching the cyclist go freewheeling through the last days of his youth, doomed to get car-doored by life at any moment. Meanwhile, Ms. Gardner has been just marking time alone in a nice old apartment: a telephone line to her elderly neighbor across the hall acting as a life-line, like a slender rope between two astronauts drifting through a particularly dangerous space-walk. Grandmother and grandson have each grown wary of the world around them, and both have their share of stories of loss and betrayal, which become their reasons for withdrawal. In that vein, great portions of the dialog deal with unfaithful husbands and wives, cruel twists of fate, and harsh penalties for embarrassing missteps in love. And, for all its sins against them, the world is banished entirely. And yet, somehow, they get on with it. Maybe it's a sort of "writerly" bit of sleight-of-hand at the very end that puts everything into focus, but I was strangely delighted as the lights came down, gimmickry or not. I guess it's the honest, polished performances, the growth of the principles on stage, and the genuinely funny and charming dialog that make it all so touching and enjoyable: a pure example of how live theater can sometimes make the inevitable into something irresistible. Tickets are a relative bargain, considering the high quality of the production, which runs through February 3, 2013, at the Emerson studio theatre. The Loretto-Hilton theater building is located at 130 Edgar Rd. in Webster Groves (on the campus of Webster University). For more information visit www.repstl.org. Cast Crew
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