The Old Vic’s production of Amy Herzog’s play 4000 Miles, which was to have featured the West End debut of Timothée Chalamet in a co-starring role opposite Dame Eileen Atkins, has been canceled, the theater company announced today, citing a two-year pandemic-caused delay.
In a statement to ticket-holders, theater management wrote:
Following its postponement due to the pandemic, and despite an enormous amount of effort from all involved, we have now sadly and reluctantly concluded that we are unable to reschedule the show at a time possible for everyone involved.
It’s been a long journey to get to this point and despite two years of trying hard to make it work, it has proved impossible. We’re sorry not to have better news, and we want to thank you for your continued patience and understanding. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost two years to the day that we should have been stepping onto The Old Vic stage for the first preview to share our show with an extremely eager audience (‘4000 Miles’ was one of the top-selling shows ever to be scheduled at this theater).
The Pulitzer-nominated play was initially scheduled to begin performances at the Old Vic on April 6, 2020, but was postponed due to the Covid pandemic shutdown.
Herzog’s play ran Off Broadway in both 2011 and 2012, and was a finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
As the Old Vic described the play: At the beginning of the summer 21-year-old Leo set out from the West Coast cycling across America with his best friend. After weeks of radio silence, no one is more surprised than his 91-year-old grandmother, Vera, when Leo turns up on her Manhattan doorstep in the middle of the night. His life just starting, hers nearly ended, in a faded Greenwich Village apartment their griefs collide.
Chalamet, whose current movie projects include Wonka, would have played the grandson to Atkins’ grandmother.