One-Man Royko Show at Chopin Theatre

By Robert Chiarito

Mike Royko: The Toughest Man in Chicago, writer and actor Mitchell Bisschop’s nostalgic love letter to Mike Royko, opened this weekend and provided a feast for those who grew up reading and loving the legendary columnist. For others who are not familiar with Royko, it may have been a meal lacking some courses.

The one-man show opened at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, and features a bare-bones set with a desk on one side and a bar (set to look like the inside of the Billy Goat Tavern) on the other, along with five rectangular video screens where intermittent news clips or digital images are displayed to set the time. At times during the show a few voice-overs are heard as well.

While the show is not a biography of Royko, Bisschop does feature Royko’s works in sequential order from his days when he lived above a Milwaukee Avenue tavern — not far from the Chopin Theater--to lying to the Air Force to get a job running the base newspaper and then getting a job at the old Chicago Daily News. Never mind that Royko worked several years as a beat reporter before being given a column. That oversight probably can be chalked up to ensuring the performance didn’t last too long, and Bisschop did an amazing job memorizing more than 20 columns and/or other Royko writings (he also takes some from television interviews of Royko, Royko’s beloved book Boss, and a posthumous collection of letters called Royko in Love: Mike’s Letters to Carol edited by Royko’s son David).

From there, Bisschop recites and acts out columns that often mark significant historic events in both Chicago and the country. Many readers of Royko will recognize several of the well-known columns Bisschop used, like the one about the day Jackie Robinson made his debut at Wrigley Field and the one Royko penned after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. It was nice to see a few lesser-known works used as well, like a column about a female dry cleaner who we learn is his mother and his responses to reader letters.

Throughout the show the video screens help mark the passage of time along with a costume change as Bisschop’s Royko goes from a suit and tie to more casual outfit and a change of style in eyeglasses. Unfortunately, Bisschop, an obvious non-smoker, did not get a lesson on how to hold a fake cigarette, as he holds it more like a pen than a square.

It’s important to keep in mind that Royko likely never envisioned his writing being performed, so while it works for some of the columns, others are surely more impactful to a reader than a viewer. Rokyo wrote more than 7,500 columns in his career so deciding what to use and not use was likely a tall task — but one Bisschop didn’t perfect, as the show is too long, with the first act clocking in at an hour and 15 minutes and the second at 45 minutes. 

Bisschop would have been better served by eliminating a few of the columns — off the top of my mind, I’d say the column about Ronald Reagan and guns and Los Angeles cop Mark Furhman of O.J. Simpson fame are just two that should have been left on the cutting room floor. Instead, he should probably have put in a little more of alter-ego Slats Grobnik, as he is only mentioned one time. He also could have put in more of Royko’s dark side and made it a tighter one-act, 90-minute show.

It’s been well documented that Bisschop met with Mike Royko’s widow Judy and a couple other Royko friends — both to ensure accuracy and to get their blessings, not that he really needed it. I applaud him for wanting to be accurate, but by seeking their approval he may have shorted the audience of a more complete picture of Royko. There is no exploration of Royko’s other side, the curmudgeon who smoked and drank too much, which contributed to his reputation and likely contributed to his at-times cantankerous personality and to his death at 64. While Bisschop has been clear that the show was never intended to be a biography, a more complete picture of Royko would have been preferred.

For those who grew up reading Royko, the few oversights may be lost in the happy nostalgia they experience by hearing the stories they read long ago performed on stage. But for those who are unfamiliar — and there are many considering that he’s been dead for more than 27 years now —they may feel that the point of the show was merely to hear his columns read aloud instead of seeing something with a well-defined story arc. 

That said, the mere fact that Royko is the subject of an active one-man play will likely bring him to the attention of those who were not familiar with his writing--and that is a good thing. They can also find his book Boss, which has never gone out of print, in any bookstore, and several collections of his newspaper columns that have been published. Additionally, the Newberry Library has a current exhibition called Chicago Style, Mike Royko and Windy City Journalism that runs through September 28.

Mike Royko: The Toughest Man in Chicago runs at the Chopin Theatre through September 29. Royko was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame in 2011. General admission tickets are on sale for $60.

Robert Chiarito is a Chicago-based freelance journalist who regularly reports for The New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Magazine and others.