An unsettling coming-of-age story for the modern day, The Xylophone West chronicles a young boy's journey into the heart of violence and back again. Set against the backdrop of an insular, rural community in Nebraska, the story ignites with Patrick plotting a flight west to escape an increasingly hostile gang of boys at his high school. When a nightmarish accident nixes his chance of outrunning them, he is forced to confront his aggressors, and himself. 

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"HIGHLY RECOMMENDED... Maybe the national discourse surrounding antigay bullying would be more constructive if we dropped the schoolyard term and called it what it actually is: abuse. Alex Lubischer's confrontational and unnerving new drama helps to bridge that vernacular gap by lifting the stakes to where they should be. Two closeted teens endure adolescent malice from their private school peers before deciding that they've had enough. Their solution: forgo seeking help from complacent faculty and ride the rails out to homo-friendly Hollywood. Fine Print and director Josh Sobel distinguish their show from the wider agitprop It Gets Better narrative by folding inner demons—corrosive resentment, mostly—in as an antagonist."

     -Chicago Reader

 

"RECOMMENDED... a haunting meditation on bullying in a small Nebraska town. Not a simplistic tale of good and evil, The Xylophone West considers the lasting marks of violence in a homophobic culture... Certain scenes, including that locker-room harassment, are so vividly presented here I squirmed in my seat—as if the horror of this prevalent social reality had been brought to life for the first time. This is the triumph of Fine Print’s production, directed and performed with an exciting, bold professionalism. Director Josh Sobel infuses the entire show, including his swift, inventive scene changes, with the suffocating aura of small-town brutality; expert light and sound design heighten the mood... Fine Print renders a work of social realism immediate and fresh through the old-fashioned tools of solid ensemble theater."

     -Time Out Chicago

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"RECOMMENDED... Resourceful and inventive use of a sparse set made of wooden crates and chicken-wire walls adds an appropriately dystopic air. In fact, one couldn’t ask for a better setting than an actual gym for such a tale, and the set design by Nick Sieben is a cross between a thunderdome and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video... Patrick’s personal battle to resist the internal animal – of speech over silence, of rising above over falling below – has the potential to become a small victory in the struggle eternal. It’s unfair for one to have to endure such indignities, but as one boy post-traumatically muses, “‘Fair’ is a made-up word.”

     -Chicago Theatre Review