I’m beginning to be a big big fan of the plays that Weathervane Playhouse, a Knight Arts grantee, is putting on in its intimate 48-seat Dietz Theater. The current production, Amy Herzog’s “4000 Miles” and the brilliant cast selected by director Fred Gloor, has sown up that conviction. It is definitely one worth seeing.

Herzog was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for this work. No wonder, since it takes in a slice of Americana – intergenerational in a plot dealing with interactions between a grandmother and her grandson; a wide tour of American history from allusions to the 1950s-1960s, when many intellectuals were taken with aspects of Communism through current reverberations of Maoism; and a coming-of-age tale for one of the central characters, Leo (played by Nate Miller), who has his own on-the-road experience by bicycle.

The action begins when the traveling Leo shows up at his grandmother’s New York City apartment in the middle of the night, tired and weary from his trip, having nowhere else to go (since he is estranged from his family because of a real or imagined assignation with his stepsister), and recoiling from a tragedy that happened along the way. Not to give anything away, but the incident involves the kind of traffic accident that no one should ever have to witness, but if he or she does, the vision of it would loop seemingly endlessly through one’s inner vision with nightmarish pain and ever darker emotions.

The grandmother, Vera (played by Harriet DeVeto) takes him in, agreeing not to tell his parents where he is, even though she is in regular contact with them and knows they are wondering and worried.

Nate Miller (Leo) and Harriet DeVeto (Vera), in “4000 Miles.” Photo courtesy of Weathervane Playhouse

The substance of the play is watching the two learning how to live with each other while dealing with their own issues. Vera is well aware that she is losing a grip on her memory. At times she forgets where she puts things and has some difficult moments finding the right words to describe what she is wanting to say. She sees no one apparently, but has ongoing telephone contact with another shut-in neighbor (and in that way they keep track of and support one another).

Leo has problems with a former girlfriend who recently broke up with him. That would be traumatic enough in a young life, but coupled with the horrible incident en route, it makes him a brooding, searching soul.

These aspects of the play are certainly dark and serious, but playwright Herzog plays them out in a smart script that allows us to laugh at the characters’ foibles while gently understanding them and their courage in standing up to their strife in life, however bedraggled they seem to be.

Harriet DeVeto knows just how to convey all those emotions and traits of character. She is a fabulous actress and was absolutely in the moment during the formal opening night performance. She seemed to be so fully in character that one starts knowing Vera well enough to know how she is going to react when something happens to her. At times wise-cracking, at others lost in a world she has trouble recognizing, and nostalgic in the memories of some great times, DeVeto’s Vera is worth going to the theater to see.

So are the other players. Nate Miller as Leo is terrific at conveying the complex emotions surrounding a young man trying to act with bravado at the same time he is being beset with huge problems in his young life.

Kat Bi is adorable in her role as the young woman, Amanda, whom Leo picks up one night and brings home. She is hysterically funny in an amoral, pleasure-seeking way. When the two consider having sex, she is fine with it until she knows Vera had been an intellectual Communist, for Amanda’s family were refugees from Mao’s China. But that doesn’t undo her as much as seeing the grandmother without her teeth. She has her shallower side.

Lauren Fowkes is appropriately tough and determined as the former girlfriend. She plays the smart college girl getting on independently with her life with a matter-of-factness that lets the audience clearly see the effects on Leo.

“4000 Miles” is the sort of play that doesn’t really end, but simply stops as though finished with this portion of the characters’ lives. They are ready to move on.

Try to get to one of the five performances left in the short run of this finely written and acted play.

“4000 Miles” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, and 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday (with a 2:30 p.m. matinee on Saturday), through November 15 in the Dietz Theater at Weathervane Playhouse, 1301 Weathervane Lane; 330-836-2626; www.weathervaneplayhouse.com. Tickets are $18 ($5 for students).