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New York playwright Amy Herzog became contemporary theater's darling when her play 4000 Miles was the first from Lincoln Center Theater's prolific new works program to get an off-Broadway run. Then it got nominated for a Pulitzer, won the off-Broadway version of a Tony Award, and was Time magazine's top play of 2012.
Herzog has only written four plays—all in a prolific five-year period—but Portland has already seen a lot of her. Belleville ended a run at CoHo Theater on April 18. A year ago, Portland Playhouse staged After the Revolution. And her most famous work, 4000 Miles, opens Saturday at Artists Rep.
There's nothing extraordinary in Herzog's plays. Revolution and 4000 Miles are simple in premise and setting: An American family navigates relationship dynamics at home.
"She does realism so well. People seem to be craving that," says Artists Rep spokeswoman Nicole Lane.
In 4000 Miles, Revolution's ex-revolutionary grandma Vera—played by Vana O'Brien—is a toothless 91-year-old when her grandson Leo appears on her Greenwich Village doorstep before dawn, with a bicycle and a lot of emotional baggage. The play risks being pigeonholed as a stereotypical generational conflict between rudderless 21-year-old Leo and the grandmother who's as traditional as he is a hippie. But Herzog is also known for making everyday moments surprisingly haunting.
Artists Rep is taking deliberate steps to draw audiences in with sights and sounds. The stage's wood flooring and hanging pictures extend into the entry halls. "You feel welcomed into her home, where's she's lived for decades," Lane says. Resident sound designer Rodolfo Ortega composed an original soundtrack for the production that he says sounds like Texas rock band Explosions in the Sky.
"And, of course, they smoke pot together onstage," says Lane, explaining that it's actually a raspberry leaf and an e-cigarette stuffed into a pipe. "But it looks just like bud."
As far as gateway drugs go, Revolution got Portlanders hooked. But now that the city has staged three of Herzog's four plays—she wrote all of them in a prolific five-year period—after The Great God Pan is inevitably staged, we'll need a new darling.
SEE IT: 4000 Miles is at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St., 241-1278. 7:30 pm Tuesdays-Sundays, 2 pm Sundays, May 2-24. $41-$59.
WWeek 2015