Rise of the Numberless
Playwrights: Andrew Hobgood, Patriac Coakley, Evan Linder; Composers: Chris Gingrich, Julie B. Nichols; Lyricists: Gingrich and Hobgood. At: Bailiwick Chicago and The New Colony at Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave. Tickets: www.numberless.org; $20-$25. Runs through: May 26
Sixty Miles to Silver Lake
Playwright: Dan LeFranc
At: Collaboraction at Flat Iron
Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Tickets: www.collaboraction.org; $15-$25
Runs through: May 27
Collaboraction recently moved its headquarters to the historic Flat Iron Arts Building in Wicker Park. Some saw it as a risk for the once-itinerant company to stake a claim on just one location, but two recent back-to-back premieres of Sixty Miles to Silver Lake and Rise of the Numberless show that Collaboraction's bet on the Flat Iron Arts Building as its home and as a rental venue might very well pay off.
Numberless is making the most noise (literally) of the two shows as a world-premiere rock musical created by the combined forces of The New Colony and Bailiwick Chicago. It's an immersive play-within-a-play experience where the audience is whisked away to a futuristic dystopian America where a persecuted minority group known as "The Numberless" rise up in secret to counter government propaganda in an angry rock musical of tragic Greek proportions. (Note: You may want to tote some ear plugs along.)
On one hand, the dramatic premise to Numberless is laughable. Why would these rebels hiding from government forces choose to draw so much attention to themselves with glam-rock face paint and blaringly loud music?
Yet, by raising the stakes of an impending government attack, Numberless ratchets up the suspense and makes you ponder the message of its heroes expressing themselves, their truth and exposing hypocrisy via theatrical rock songs. The cast and crew, under Andrew Hobgood's direction, really throw themselves into the materialeven if it is sketchily laid out at times.
Although the reality of its premise is shaky, Numberless is definitely a lively and stylized show designed to appeal to both sci-fi fans and frequent denizens of the nearby Double Door.
Collaboraction's Sixty Miles to Silver Lake deserves attention in its Chicago premiere since it's an earlier work of Dan LeFranc, who is best known nowadays for his critically acclaimed drama The Big Meal which had its world premiere at Chicago's American Theater Company last year and just finished an extended off-Broadway run in New York.
Sixty Miles is a compressed-time drama showing divorced father Ky (Sean Bolger), and his teenage son, Denny (Ethan Dubin), on multiple drives to his L.A.-area home for weekend visits. Mixed among the mundane spats, LeFranc adds in much more dramatic revelations that ultimately shape how Denny becomes an adult and how he deals with relationships.
Director Sarah Moeller elicits great back-and-forth responses from both Bolger and Dubin during the tedious father-son squabbling and their reactions to more confrontational and shocking news. Though it all, you get a great sense of what LeFranc was aiming for dramatically by showing the micro and major moments of a father-son relationship happening now and across the course of a lifetime.