Displaying items by tag: Steve Scott

Mike Royko is a seminal influence on—and expression of—Chicago culture. Even today, if many locals might not know who Royko was, millions across the country do—his column was syndicated in 600 newspapers. The Pulitzer prize-winning columnist published non-stop for 30 years, starting at the now defunct Chicago Daily News, moving to its surviving sibling Chicago Sun-Times, and finally going to the Chicago Tribune to escape working for Rupert Murdoch when the media titan acquired the morning tabloid.

Royko’s columns were both fearless in tackling those in power, and immensely funny. So is “Royko: The Toughest Man in Chicago,” the excellent one-man show now playing at Chopin Theatre. “Royko” is the brainchild of writer and performer Mitchell Bisschop, whose script artfully draws from the spectrum of Royko’s work. Those columns were serious and wry, courageous and, occasionally, sentimental, but the subtext remained throughout—calling out injustice, and for righting wrongs, especially from the powerful and politically connected.

While Royko’s own words power much of the script, for Bisschop, building a dramatic storyline, and selecting from so much material, was probably the greatest challenge. And he has succeeded in spades. As a performer, Bisschop captures Royko the man, and we have no trouble buying in. While there isn’t much movement on the stage—we see Royko at his desk, and at the tavern—he was a writer and talker first.

Some of the scenes include multimedia production: split screen projections and videos from original source, or recreated with Bisschop playing Royko on camera in moments that wouldn’t have been captured. Or reading from his own writing, like the scene early on in which Royko questioned why Frank Sinatra was getting 24-hour Chicago police guards while in town, even as ordinary citizens fended for themselves on streets and subways.

Never one for understatement, Royko also cited Sinatra’s mob ties, said he punched an elderly drunk, and claimed Sinatra wore a toupee. That May 1976 column earned Royko an angry retort from Sinatra, which came in that period’s equivalent of a flaming post: a letter to the editor. Sinatra told Royko his sources were wrong, called him a pimp, and offered a $100,000 if he could prove he punched an elderly drunk. Sinatra also challenged Royko to pull his wig off.

A Chicago high school graduate with Polish and Ukrainian parents, Royko was funny, irreverent, and always remained a self-empowered voice for the average Joe on the street. Royko was a burr under the saddle of Mayor Richard J. Daley, who barred him from the City Hall pressroom. Royko’s best-selling 1971 book on Daley, “Boss,” was also banned at certain retailers in the city, but remains the definitive exploration of the Chicago democratic political machine at its time. Royko’s notoriety in the political class may be one reason we saw a packed house opening night, which included Royko’s son Sam, who ran for alderman last cycle, and former Illinois governor Pat Quinn, among numerous political influencers and forces. 

Royko wrote in a sophisticated yet colloquial style that embodied Chicago argot, the same language that succeeding generations of immigrants adopt as the influences of their native tongues dissipate. That speech is parodied on Saturday Night Live during the heyday of Dan Akroyd and John Belushi - “Da Bears” - the latter is a nephew of Royko. Like other journalists, Royko hung out at the Billy Goat Tavern, the subterranean Wacker Drive burger joint also made famous by Belushi.

Bisschop includes many key Royko-isms—his love of 16-inch softball; the fictional Slats Grobnik, an earthy tavern-dweller that voiced bald remarks even Royko dared not speak— and his ineffable characterizations of the Chicago political scene. Royko suggested Chicago change its motto from Urbs in horto (city in a garden) to “Where’s mine?” He noted the steadfast loyalty of Chicago politicians. “When someone takes a bribe here, they stay bought.”

At times he could soar, and Bisschop includes Royko’s column after the assassination of Martin Luther King, and exploration of the responsibility we all carry for harboring or passively assenting to the sentiments that led to the shooting. Another, about a woman running a dry cleaning shop that doubles as a neighborhood hangout, and is threatened by a national chain, is truly moving.

Royko’s influence was strongly felt by comedians and producers at a local humor factory, Second City, the Wells Street institution. That list includes Bisschop, and also Beth Kligerman, a producer of this Royko show who for 25 years was casting director and producer at Second City. (Also producing is actress Lecy Goranson, a Chicago-native and well-known for her role as the daughter Becky on the “Roseanne” TV series.)

Compared with other one-man shows, “Royko” has a tendency to be static. Bischopp perhaps could move around the stage a bit more. Some technical matters need adjustment. When we hear the other side of a phone conversation, the amplification overpowers the non-amplified Royko. Overall, director Steve Scott (more than 25 years with Goodman) elicits a strong performance from Bisschop, and blends the multimedia elements well into the production.

Highly recommended, “Royko: The Toughest Man In Chicago” runs through September 29, 2024 at the Chopin Theatre in Chicago.

Rose, the one-woman show featuring the matriarch of the Kennedy family, has returned to the Greenhouse Theater Center. In an extraordinary performance by Linda Reiter, Rose provides a back-story on the family dynamics at play among the Kennedy’s - a window into the powerful maternal force that delivered so many dynamic individuals, including two Senators and a President, to the public sphere.

The show received accolades during its 2016 incarnation, and it is easy to see why. But the social landscape has changed mightily since then. But it was probably not planned that way at Greenhouse Theater. The current run, which coincides with the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s election, serves as a commentary on the times - with a Presidency that has moved into what Peggy Noonan has called a “post heroic” phase. 

Highly successful in its original run in Chicago and off-Broadway, this 120-minute, one-act script by  Laurence Leamer artfully chronicles the trials of the long-suffering Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Though during the days when her sons Jack, Robert, and Ted Kennedy were in office, Rose Kennedy was a more behind the scenes public force than another comparable political scion, Barbara Bush, in her day.

“I’d rather be the mother of the President than the President,” Rose tells us, moving around a sitting room of French provincial furniture, in slacks, sweater and pearls, and her signature black bouffant hairdo. She lifts the many photos and peruses albums, some of which are also projected on a wal behind the set.

The details into the family come from years of research by author Leamer, who wrote a best-selling trilogy on the Kennedys - The Kennedy Women, The Kennedy Men and Sons of Camelot - all New York Times best sellers. Leamer was subsequently given access to 50 hours of taped interviews with Rose Kennedy, which provide a previously unseen look into the family, including infidelities and troubling dynamics of her marriage to Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., a successful businessman, and appointed by Franklin Roosevelt as the first chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission. He is known also to Chicagoans as the owner of the Merchandise Mart.

Chicago actress Linda Reiter reprises her role, in an excellent, highly polished performance that will draw a tear as she recounts the many successes of her offspring, four of whom (Jack assassinated in 1963 and Robert in 1968; her oldest Joseph, dies in an air force bombing mission 1944; and Kathleen in a 1947 plane crash).

It is a telling commentary on the cultural landscape that the relevance of Rose is quite changed. During its 2016 run, Artistic Director Jacob Harvey anticipated former first lady Hillary Clinton as a first woman U.S. President.  And one whose spouse had leveraged political links to the Kennedy family during his Presidential campaigns.  

But that was not how it turned out. And so how do we look at Rose today?

Leamer presents a full-dimensioned character with Rose, who is revealed over the course of this 100-minute one-act by her one-sided conversation with an unseen visitor, who arrives soon after Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick scandal cum tragedy.

Periodically phone calls interrupt – her daughters Eunice and Pat; the widow Jacqueline. She is hoping to hear from Teddy, her only remaining son, but he is AWOL for the moment.

In the face of this latest blow to the family, Rose is seeking solace in the Greek tragedies, citing Hecuba, a play by Euripides.

This detail by Leamer gives the play heft and illuminates its underpinnings; we are to see Rose as a woman who has suffered unbearable pain, and yet she endures. Her ancient counterpart Hecuba has several parallels to Rose: she lost her throne as queen when Troy fell; she had nineteen children with wealthy King Priam; she saw a daughter Polyxena sacrificed by enemies, and her youngest son, Polydorus, murdered by enemies.

Rose Kennedy had nine children with wealthy Joseph P. Kennedy; she lived to see two assassinated and two killed in crashes.

Euripides Hecuba is driven mad by her suffering. Rose handles it with Stoicism – another gift of the Greeks, though her version comes by way of the Catholic Church of Irish-Americans.   

“My faith is a discipline, a path from which I never wander,” Rose tells us. She references the Greeks again in a quote favored by her son, Bobby - “God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

If the Presidency is in a post-heroic phase, the play Rose gives us access to the powerful story of the a more congenial moment in time when individuals and leaders asked not what the country could do for them, but what they could do for the country. Rose runs through March 11 at the Greenhouse Theater Center.

"Attention must be paid," Arthur Miller pleads in his Pulitzer Prize winning play "Death of a Salesman." What is now required reading, "Death of a Salesman" asks its audience to consider the worth of one pathetic old man. The play debuted in 1949, at a time when America was coming out of a war and questioning the value of personal fulfillment. For that theme alone this play will always be relevant. 

The intimate space at Redtwist Theatre makes for an overwhelming experience. In many of the scenes there's an almost voyeuristic feel. As if you're in someone's living room listening to something you shouldn't. Director Steve Scott uses this atmospheric effect to create a palpable intensity. After the lights go out on the final scene, an audience gasped in unison. 

Brian Parry delivers a powerhouse performance as Willy Loman. Both tough and weak at the same time. His Loman is still feisty, making the ending all the more tragic. Jan Ellen Graves' Linda Loman is played calm and collected and rarely sentimental, but lively when the moment is right. Matt Edmonds gives a standout performance as Biff. There are such revelations in Edmonds' interpretation. 

Like Tennessee Williams and Eugene O'Neill, Arthur Miller knew America. He knew the sad and melancholic ways average people live. "Death of a Salesman" should make us uncomfortable. We should bristle at the idea of one average man getting used up and thrown away. It's a warning that if you don't take control of your own destiny, society will toss you aside. Willy Loman skirts through life on quick fixes and delusions. In a way, all of us are Willy Loman and Miller asks us to look beyond the superficial. As "On the Road" had also inspired a younger generation to live life differently than their parents, so does "Death of a Salesman." The moral here is that nobody wants to end up as Willy Loman. 

Through March 5 at Redtwist Theatre. 1044 W BrynMawr 773-728-7529

www.Redtwist.org 

Truth should be at the heart of every good drama piece. Truth, honesty, a bit of realism, something that makes the audience connect with the story, or the characters. Terrence McNally's Mothers and Sons playing at Northlight Theatre in Skokie attempts to reach a truthful depth, but leaves audiences shrugging with indifference wondering what exactly to take away from the play.

Nearly twenty years after her son’s AIDS related death, Katharine (Cindy Gold) pays an unexpected visit to the New York apartment of his former partner, Cal (Jeff Parker), who is now married to another man and has a young child. Over the course of the play Katharine and Cal exchange stories, sass, and sarcasm as they awkwardly interact and attempt to reconcile. Katharine remains judgmental and curt throughout her visit to the apartment, portraying the stereotypical conservative, old fashioned, bitter woman well. Cal, on the other hand, attempts to be gracious and overtly friendly in the face of this judgmental woman. Things heat up when we meet Cal’s partner Will (Benjamin Sprunger) and their son Bud (Ben Miller). Katharine’s disdain for the household and the situation is apparent but predictable as are the interactions with the two men. The remainder of the play is both forced and at time self-righteous and does nothing to move the needle on the many themes it attempts to tackle.

At the heart of the play is a conservative, judgmental woman “challenged’ to accept that her son was gay and that a same-sex couple is raising a child. This theme might have been provocative ten years earlier, but now is played out. Mothers and Sons also touches on homosexuality, AIDS, same-sex marriage, same-sex parenting, loss of a child, loss of a husband, and tries its best to address all of them within the 90 minute run time. There are so many themes that we forget that the son was the driving force that brought this woman to this apartment. He is used more as a prop, much like the journal that was hardly mentioned - though we come to find was the reason for Katharine’s visit. What’s more is the themes and how the play chooses to address them are not profound or thought provoking. Nothing is said that the audience doesn’t already know, or even what the characters don’t already know, which borders on the preachy versus clever. And these themes don’t do anything to change the characters or bring them closer together. At one point, Will’s character is so offended that he asks Katharine to leave, though she stays, shares a self-indulgent “woe-is-me” story that highlights her selfishness more, and suddenly Cal is embracing her as if he understands her after all these years. This sentiment is entirely lost on the audience. Will, the character who was ready to throw the woman out, is suddenly calm, cool, and collected. The young boy offers cookies and milk to everyone, refers to this strange woman as grandma and they all sit around and all but sing Kumbaya. And that is where the play ends. 

Isn’t that truth? That in a matter of a single awkward visit, a selfish, self-loathing, gay-hating conservative becomes accepting of gay marriage, same-sex parenting, and her son’s death? And that her son’s former partner who felt the cold sting and shun of this woman would be so moved as to invite her into his home and his family? It isn’t truth. It’s trite and contrived. Call me a cynic, a millennial, jaded, what have you. The truth might be that people like Katharine still exist in the world, but would someone really be swayed in such a short amount of time? Was it out of sheer loneliness on her part and pity on his end that these two characters accepted one another and will move forward? Mothers and Sons did not offer us this depth, so it’s hardly worthy of such deep analysis.

Truthfully, there isn’t much one could take away from Mothers and Sons. You could reach and say it was a profound dialogue about how the definition of family continually changes and evolves. You could speculate that people in mourning can come together to find comfort and support in one another. But Mothers and Sons does nothing to challenge the audience or the characters, or create a worthwhile dialogue in today’s world.

Directed by Steve Scott, Mothers and Sons runs through February 27th. Tickets are available at http://www.northlight.org/.