Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

Monique Carboni ©2025  Dane DeHaan (as Denny) and Joseph Adams (as Ky)

A play about a series of car rides of a father and son might not sound like the most exciting of prospects for a full-length endeavor, but Dan LeFranc’s Sixty Miles to Silver Lake coasts by with surprising results. The set-up is fairly straightforward: a disaffected teen boy (Dane DeHaan) and his short-fused but strangely loving dad (Joseph Adams) shoot the breeze on various auto travails at different points in their lives, which typically involve the paterfamilias inquiring about his shady-sounding ex-wife, questioning his son’s interest in soccer, arguments about what music to play, and some unsavory sex talk in which dear old dad imparts wisdom to his son about sexual practices. As the play unfolds, patterns begin to emerge such as the father’s speech repetition (he speaks to his boy in nearly the same cadences no matter what age he is) and the son’s petulant refusal to listen to his father much of the time, contorting his limbs like a caged animal and making finger figures onto the car window while pop prattles on.

Director Anne Kauffman has quite a challenge here: how to make a play with nothing but talk seem interesting, even in the midst of pattern repetition. But while the play might have been even more effective as, say, a 45-minute one act, the creative team mines the play for full potential. LeFranc’s writing could have benefited from a little more nuance, but given this is his first major effort, it’s a sturdy piece, most impressive when it zeroes in on the contempt one can have for family members that rises to the surface when in a tight space. Ky, the father character, cheerfully refers to his son as “squirt” and professes he is “the sun, moon and the stars” but takes equal relish in deriding him for immaturity, while son Denny seems almost entirely uninterested in his dad’s advice, which, despite the callous, vulgar manner in which it is expelled, is often fairly on the mark.

It takes shrewd performers to put this kind of material over, and thankfully, Sixty Miles has two terrific ones that make sure this car never stalls. Adams and DeHaan are a superb match, the former’s wily, off-color but ultimately charismatic figure playing marvelously off the latter’s expertly judged body language and candor. There is a realistic hue to their conversations and their eventual resolutions (or non-resolutions in many cases), and despite the ugly truths they often tell one another, you never doubt their bond to one another, adding a layer to the play that keeps it from becoming a sort of Neil LaBute-lite family squabble trifle.

Particularly in its final stretch, the production becomes more experimental, fully making use of Soho Rep’s rectangular, tunnel vision-like stage and Tyler Micoleau’s inventive lighting design (following his mind-blowing work on Blasted, the previous tenant at this venue), suggesting everything from the sun to a radio dial at various points, and keeping things fully atmospheric. But it’s the actors in this intriguing two-hander who keep the wheels turning here. Without them, this production could have very well stalled at the first rest stop.