Dan LeFranc’s “Sixty Miles to Silver Lake,” at the Studio Theatre, is a stylistically unconventional play about a familiar theatrical subject: divorce and its aftermath. Set in a car, with only enough room for the driver and one passenger, its characters are a clueless divorced father, Ky (Chris Mancusi), and his soccer-loving son, Denny (Andrew Sonntag).
The premise of the play is that Ky picks Denny up every weekend after Denny’s soccer game and drives him 60 miles away from Orange County, Calif., where Denny’s mother lives, to Ky’s home in Silver Lake.
“Sixty Miles” begins with deliberately repetitious and familiar scenes, in which Ky grills Denny on every trip about his ex-wife, her new social life, her job search. Denny responds with demands for his favorite fast food, computer games, loud music. They argue about everything — from sports to the intelligence quotient of Denny’s mother.
Yet those early scenes are not there to simply demonstrate the most prosaic, boring discussions an insensitive father and his reticent son might have. They serve as prologue, establishing a base line for the psychological violence to come.
If you go
‘Sixty Miles To Silver Lake’
Where: Stage 4, The Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW
When: 8:30 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday, 7:30 p.m. Sunday; through May 9
Info: $30; 202-332-3300; studiotheatre.org
LeFranc employs a clever technique in “Sixty Miles.” It quickly becomes evident that the play exists in a time warp, taking place throughout a span of seven years. Denny is a young teenager at the start, then older, then 9, then in college. The jumps in time give a frenetic sense to the play, which is exaggerated by the fact that, as the play draws to a close, the scenes get shorter and shorter, some lasting only a few seconds. The dialogue grows increasingly brief, then becomes nonexistent. As directed by Serge Seiden, the scenes illustrate Denny’s increasing anger, need and fear as even the pretense of communication diminishes.
Sonntag is marvelous as Denny, capturing the disinterest, disgust and rage a teenage boy might feel at the way his parents have behaved and the terror he might feel at what waits in store for him. Whether he presses his face against the window in boredom or lashes out in anger to his father, Sonntag’s Denny is the epitome of angst and loneliness.
Mancusi plays Ky as a gruff, pathetic loser, so out of touch with reality that he can’t see why he has no connection with his child. Ky is not only a bumbling dad trying too hard to be a pal to his estranged son, he asks parentally incorrect questions and offers inappropriate sexual advice to Denny. As if that weren’t enough, Ky is actively cruel; Mancusi emphasizes both Ky’s idiocy and his brutality.
Ryan Gastelum’s sound design and John Burkland’s lighting design are powerful, demarking one trip to Silver Lake from the next. Luciana Stecconi’s set is simple and effective. The frame of the front seat of a Volvo creates the confining locus for this road trip from hell, a dramatic statement of severe emotional claustrophobia and need.
