The Royko play is back. At the Chopin Theatre until Dec. 22. Having maintained a manful silence during its first run, the smart thing for me to do would be to continue keeping my big yap shut.
But being a newspaperman was never a particularly intelligent way to make a living, never mind being a columnist who — I think people forget — is supposed to stir the pot.
First the short take. I saw “Royko: The Toughest Man in Chicago” during its initial run in September — how could I not? — and enjoyed the one-man show, in the main. I love the part when Royko compares writing for a newspaper to being a kid playing outside at dusk, begging for just a few more minutes, another turn at bat, before he has to go into the house for a bath and homework and all the dull non-fun stuff kids are forced to do. This was in the context of the death of the great Chicago Daily News in 1978. Now we face the looming demise of the entire industry. I’m going to miss this.
And I’m no Royko; Royko was great, the greased hub on which Chicago spun, and the play captures that nicely. Reading a Royko column, I used to say, was like having a computer chip implanted in your brain, a new circuit about whatever subject he was addressing. His thoughts become your thoughts. He was that good. Not all the time of course — people forget that. Royko wrote his share of duds — five days a week, you had to. But enough home runs to keep fans cheering.
Where writer/actor Mitchell Bisschop falls short is that Royko was not the sum of his writing, but a human being, and a deeply flawed one at that. He could be menacing and mean, there at the end of the bar at the Billy Goat, sucking back his cocktails snarling at the world. The daring suburbanite or forward young journalist who approached him did so at his own peril.
I never had a good encounter with him. Not one. He once threatened to break my legs, and not in some teasing, avuncular way, but in a dead serious “I’ll-break-your-f——g-legs” way.
A little of THAT Royko might have given the play more bite. But then, I suppose Bisschop wouldn’t have gotten the cooperation of the family needed to pad his play with big blocks of Royko’s classic columns.
Maybe this play will inspire someone to write an actual play about Royko, the man, and his era that doesn’t quote any columns. The material is certainly available.
Right here, I have a letter from Royko framed in my office, displayed as a kind of trophy. Not to me, but addressed to a woman he confronted in a bar and, when she didn’t recognize him, threatened with a broken ketchup bottle.
“Please accept my apologies for my disgusting, boorish, and inexcusable behavior,” Royko begins. “If I caused you any discomfort or inconvenience, I am truly sorry. Any anger you felt, and I probably gave you cause to be outraged, can’t equal the self-disgust and anger I experience when I eventually realized what a sorry fool I had made of myself.”
The 1977 incident was significant enough that it made Richard Ciccone’s fine biography.
“I wrote her a letter of apology,” complained Royko, in the classic bully feint, making himself the victim of the incident. “Christ, it’s a collector’s item.”
Actually, it’s not. Reluctant to take something of value from a reader, I sent a copy to both Leslie Hindman and Heritage auction houses. Would they sell it for her?
“I’m afraid there isn’t much of a market for Mike Royko’s autograph,” wrote Sandra Palomino, at Heritage.
“While the content is certainly interesting, unfortunately we do not feel that we would have the strongest market for the letter,” wrote Katie Horstman, at Hindman.
Time passes. For most of us. I ran into Royko’s second wife outside the theater and tried to make conversation. She said she’d seen the play three times, and then fled as if Royko had deputized her to be frosty to the competition on his behalf from beyond the grave. Even though there is no competition. No one can compete with him, and only a fool would try.
I have a hard enough time being me, someone who might have enjoyed the play more had Royko’s widow enjoyed it less. You can’t please everybody in the writing game, and if you try to please one particular person, you usually end up letting down the rest.