| Hizzoner
 It’s him. The
legendary Mayor Richard J. Daley, in the opening scene, kneeling to take
morning communion as the priest says with a slight Irish accent, “The
Lard be with you.”
Daley, his hair slicked back, his jowls motionless, solemnly responds
in Bridgeportese along with his minions standing behind him: “An
also which-oo.”
The national press is flocking to the big downtown musical production
of the Broadway-bound Pirate Queen, but the surprise hit Hizzoner about
more recent Irish-American history keeps getting its run extended at the
small Prop Theater on Chicago’s northwest side.
Neil Giuntoli, an actor and writer who appeared in The Shawshank Redemption,
Memphis Belle, Seinfeld, Ally McBeal, and CSI among other movies and television
shows, “channels” – that’s the only word for it
– the late mayor to the point that the audience really believes
he is back standing among them, ordering police to “shoot to kill”
arsonists after Martin Luther King’s assassination; vowing not to
let hippies disrupt the 1968 Democratic convention. Sun-Times theater
critic Hedy Weiss and columnist Mike Royko’s widow Judy both used
the word “channeling” after seeing the play.
Giuntoli is a product of Chicago and a great-nephew of Mayor Anton Cermak,
a Bohemian-American political genius who assembled the machine of ethnic
voters that allowed Daley to spend 21 years in power. After only two years
in office, Cermak was killed by a bullet meant for Franklin Delano Roosevelt
as the two rode in a car together in Miami in 1933. (On Feb 28, Daley’s
son Richard M. was reelected for another term that will see him eclipse
his father’s 21 years in office and become Chicago’s longest
serving mayor.)
But a play about Cermak? Who’d come to see it? Instead, Giuntoli
wrote about the mayor he grew up with. And while he lays bare all Daley’s
faults, it’s clear he has a reverence for the autocrat who never
moved out of his modest bungalow and who clearly loved HIS city.
He appears on the verge of tears as his aides present him with a model
of the John Hancock Building, which would precede the Sears Tower as the
city’s tallest.
Beaming and choking on his words, Daley says this is the kind of world-class
development he wants to put Chicago on the map with.
“Not bad for a cupla Irish kids from Bridgeport, eh?” he chuckles
to his aide Matt Danaher. They all smile as the lights fade and he says,
“Yeah, I can feel it: 1968 is going to be a great year for Chicago!”
Daley offers unapologetic deathbed defenses of his handling of the riots.
He appears offended when a young theology student named Jesse Jackson
balks at what Daley considers his generous offer of a job as a toll collector
on the Chicago Skyway.
Danaher and Daley’s city council floor leader Alderman Tom Keane
(Disclosure: Keane was my great-uncle. Actor Whit Spurgeon does a fair
job portraying Uncle Tom though it’s not quite channeling) get indicted
in federal corruption probes but Daley is never implicated in any schemes.
In interviews over pints after the play at Chief O’Neill’s
Pub just across the street from the Prop, and at the Abbey Pub a few doors
down, Giuntoli confesses to a real affection for Daley, and it certainly
comes through in the play.
He read the best books written about Daley, including Royko’s Boss.
And he used creative license to write the dialogue as it probably happened
between Daley, Keane, Danaher and others behind closed doors.
If Irish-Americans are looking for a good play from Chicago to go national,
this is the one. –Abdon M. Pallasch |
