All things change and time marches on. Many years ago, the Bears were a vaunted and competitive football team. The Chicago River previously flowed in the opposite direction. And the major thoroughfare known as Ashland Avenue was once named Reuben Street. What seem like permanent features on the landscape of our lives are but temporary markers that have become fixed in the memory of our view. When we hold fast to our belief in their permanence, we miss out on the trails of life that take us to new vistas. But, as life takes us evermore down new paths, it also takes us away from those we love and cherish.
Ashland Avenue by Lee Kirk places us right in the middle of the intersection between the crossing paths of the play’s characters. The Goodman’s latest production follows a Chicago father and businessman who—despite his recognition as a forty-year fixture of both the city and his family—struggles to accept the divergent point this moment represents for the lives of the people, and the city, around him. The play follows Pete (Francis Guinan), Chicago’s beloved television salesman whose commercials have been a mainstay of local advertising for over four decades. At the height of his business, he owned numerous stores across the city and produced campy, over-the-top commercials under the moniker of “Crazy Pete;” vocalized with a roller-coaster inflection that makes it clear just how crazy he and his deals truly are. A life-size cardboard cutout of Crazy Pete from the height of his fame stands sentinel on stage like a cheap Ozymandias beckoning us to look and despair at all that we see.
Francis Guinan presents a powerful portrait of a man whose vitality and joviality were once weapons of invincibility when wielded by Crazy Pete but have since faded in the twilight years of his life. The infectiously lovable local TV salesman now struggles to keep pace with the people around him. And Guinan brilliantly oscillates between the befuddled, bumbling elderly salesman and the energetic, infectious charm of Crazy Pete. When he participates in a Facebook Live event with people sharing their memories of his commercials and reminiscing on his career as a local celebrity, Pete crescendos from curmudgeonly complaining about technology to losing himself in the excitement of once again bringing a smile to the faces of an admittedly much smaller, but adoring public.
The play opens with Pete standing downstage, practicing the speech he will give upon receiving an award of meritorious recognition from the mayor. Shortly thereafter, we are introduced to Pete’s stalwartly supportive daughter, Sam (Jenna Fischer), and her husband, Mike (Chiké Johnson). The two have long found themselves endlessly orbiting Pete and his TV shop. But now, unbeknownst to Pete, they plan to jumpstart their lives and careers with a move across the country to Los Angeles. Sam and Mike spend much of the play hiding this decision from Pete for fear that he will make a big push to sell them on staying. But when Pete sets up a meeting with the bank to discuss purchasing another store for them to run, Sam reluctantly decides to tell her father of their impending departure, even though she knows it means leaving the familiar and familial behind. And while the relationship between father and daughter is warm and supportive, it’s clear that Pete has long relied on Sam to be the steady part of his life, a role she almost unconsciously slips into, as when she volunteers to vacuum his carpets, sets about repositioning misplaced items, and reminding Pete of all that she’s done to help keep his business—and him—going. And Fischer’s approach to the role, though subtle and understated, presents Sam in balanced contrast to her father. She is consistent and unflappable where he is vacillating and temperamental. And it is precisely their yin to yang bond that makes Sam’s decision to leave so heart-wrenchingly palpable for the audience.
Pete’s TV store is the hub connecting all the relational spokes in Ashland Avenue. A former employee of the store turned live-in foster daughter, Jess (Cordelia Dewdney), and her children, are similarly attempting to find a path away from Pete’s gravitational pull when Jess’s ex-boyfriend and father to her kids (played by Will Allan) reappears in their lives. Jess knows all too well the pull of Pete and with each entrance into the store she immediately begins looking for her exit strategy.
The TV store is as much a reflection of the man as it is his snare to hold on to those he cares about. Kevin Depinet’s scenic design is top-notch, setting us squarely in the trap Pete has laid by camouflaging a retail business in the familiar trappings of midwestern charm and Chicago iconography. But its worn-out aesthetic gestures to a by-gone Chicago era that perfectly encapsulates Pete’s life. It may be threadbare, but there’s still a little life left in its wearing.
Guinan matches the spatial aesthetic surrounding Pete, filling an old façade with the life-giving abundance of relationships. And the moments shared between Guinan and Fischer read as the foundation holding the entire place up: solidly enduring but imminently worrisome when cracks appear. Unfortunately, so many of the connections that breath life into the play are diminished by Susan V. Booth’s staging. The actors turn upstage to speak to one-another so frequently that their echoes heard from the back of the theatre sound like delays in audio feed. Fischer is especially difficult to hear and understand at moments. And as the characters traverse about the TV store—a space they all regularly frequent—there is a strange unfamiliarity in their movements around chairs, stools, and tables. The contours of their decisions to sit or move seem dictated by theatrical need rather than character choice.
Lee Kirk’s play snaps a picture of the terminal point just before the bonds keeping its characters connected break—a not-so-subtle critique of the unseen forces pulling at those connective sinews. Pete stands on one side of a generational divide that materially separates him from the other characters in the play. He has built his life amidst the fading luster of twentieth-century American capitalism, brilliantly represented by the all-encompassing space of his TV store/apartment/community living room. And while Sam, Mike, and Jess each benefited from the safety, comfort, and support that Pete and his store provided for them over the years, they all desperately seek to forge their own paths for their lives. Each of them hopes to find their own version of “crazy” capable of fulfilling their dreams. Sam sets out to write a novel, Mike is a burgeoning illustrator and graphic artist, and Jess seeks to be the best mother to her children. In order to get there, they will have to walk the path that leads them away from the TV store on Ashland Avenue.
Ashland Avenue is recommended. The show runs through October 12th at the Goodman Theatre. Run-time is two hours and forty minutes with one intermission. Shows run Tuesday through Sunday and tickets can be purchased at www.goodmantheatre.org or by calling the box office at (312) 443-3800.