POW! (Play Of The Week)

Sixty Miles to Silver Lake
by Dan LeFranc

Soccer: the quintessential sport to play as a kid. A car ride: a quintessential way to be stuck with someone you’d rather not spend much time with.

Sixty Miles to Silver Lake follows the relationship between one such soccer-playing kid and his father. The kid, Denny, lives with his mother during the week and his dad, Ky, on the weekends. Ky picks Denny up every Saturday after his morning soccer game, and on the sixty mile trip to Ky’s home, the two spend an uniquely uninterrupted period of time together. What appears, initially, to be a play chronically just one of those car rides, LeFranc ingeniously spins into a composite of all of the car rides Ky and Denny have on the way to Silver Lake over dozens of years of their lives. With utmost subtlety, LeFranc reveals the way these two men change and grow during their years of soccer playing and chauffeuring, and the ins and outs of this example of the deep but delicate bond between father and son.

This sparse, beautifully crafted play was co-produced by P73 and Soho Rep., two important organizations for emerging playwriting talent, and it won LeFranc the 2010 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award. LeFranc is certainly a writer to watch, and Sixty Miles to Silver Lake is a great way to get a look.

Cast: 2M, one spanning tweens to twenties, the other spanning the corresponding ages of his father
Scenes/Monlogues: The entire play is made up of a scene between two men, one younger, one older. Within that, the father goes off on some humorous rants that could make for unique monologues.

Review by Rachel K.