By Ernest Kearney — Mike Royko (1932-1997) was the bard of Chicago. A newspaper columnist in the “Windy City” for over thirty years, Royko’s estimated output of over 7,500 columns stands as a history of Chicago and America.
Writer and performer Mitchell Bisschop, himself a native Chicagoan, undoubtedly lived with Royko’s words most of his life. His admiration for, and appreciation of, the columnist and his words show in the one-man show he’s penned, The Toughest Man In Chicago.
Bisschop recreates two prominent Chicagoans in his show. Royko, and his close friend and fellow writer Louis “Studs” Terkel (1912-2008.) Bisschop employs “Terkel” to bookend his story of Royko, and it is a life story to which the audience is treated.
Bisschop highlights all the essential elements of Royko’s story and throws a special light on those that the Pulitzer Prize winning columnist would have considered personal highlights: his fairy tale marriage to the woman he fell in love with at the age of nine, his love/hate/hate/hate relationship with the Chicago Cubs and his battles against Mayor Richard M. Daley.
But what is at the core of Bisschop’s show is Royko’s Chicago or perhaps Chicago’s Royko. The two are inseparable and at times seemingly interchangeable.
Bisschop has combed Royko’s columns for the purist of his creative ore; his legendary feud with Frank Sinatra, his civic outrage at the brutality of the police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the tragically early death of his beloved wife, and the tragically late demise of Daley.
Bisschop has not only found Royko’s purist nuggets, but he wears them well too, capturing the gruff, impassioned reporting of perhaps one of the few neo-Renaissance men ever to sit at a press desk with perfect perfection.
Bisschop and Director Matt Pardue also make extensive use of actual news footage, even a clip from The Antique Road Show, in almost a Brechtian manner, managing to convey a sense of “Epic Theatre” to the show, encasing it in the historical reality of the time, and Bisschop himself in the persona of Royko. The success of this effort is, in no small part, a measure of the talents of Videographers Allex Tarr and Dan De Lorenzo.
Produced by Megan Ford Miller and Matthew Robinson, Bisschop’s show is a first-rate production that even hard-nosed Royko would have given
a PLATINUM MEDAL.
The Toughest Man in Chicago
Encore Performance
Performance Date and Venue
Thursday July 7 2022, 7:30 PM | 85 mins
ACTORS COMPANY @ LA Comedy Festival
(LET LIVE THEATER)
916 N.Formosa Ave
