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Opinionist: <em>Sixty Miles to Silver Lake</em>
By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 25, 2009
Modified Jan 27, 2009
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By
John Del Signore
Published Jan 25, 2009
Modified Jan 27, 2009
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Anybody who grew up shuttling back and forth between divorced parents will be all too familiar with the stifling setting of Sixty Miles to Silver Lake: the interior of a car, inhabited only by a single dad and his soccer-playing son, who have no choice but to interact with each other on the long slog between the boy's mother's house and the father's depressing apartment. If that sounds like your idea of a fun road trip, then you'll love Dan LeFranc's play, which takes place entirely within the confines of a Volvo stationwagon, driven by a miserable father named Ky, with his petulant son Denny riding shotgun.
"Sixty Miles"—and let's just get this bit of bitchiness out of the way; it feels like one hundred and sixty miles—skips around through time to examine one fractured family's ongoing acrimony, but for a play that spans eight years, it's remarkable how little changes. Denny "so wishes you weren't my dad" as much at the beginning as at the end, and Ky is still a bitter, vulgar loser when the wheels stop spinning. Maybe that's LeFranc's point; that a relationship between father and son can become tragically frozen at a certain stage of development, no matter how many miles they put behind them. But that doesn't make for compelling theater in this case.
The really fatal flaw is that both characters in this two-man show are not only unlikable, but none too bright, either. As the son, actor Dane DeHaan does a fine job of bringing nuance to the cliched role of the frustrated teenager, but Joseph Adams makes the mistake of playing Ky as written (i.e., a major dick), instead of creating contrast by introducing some admirable qualities. Bottom line: You wouldn't want to be stuck on a long car ride with this prick, and especially not when you're paying for it. The only surprising moment in LeFranc's tedious trip comes at the end, when father and son finally step out of the car to kick a soccer ball around, and not a single note from "Cats in the Cradle" is heard.
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sixty miles to silver lake
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John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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