Jimmy Carrane has been turning his life stories into popular one-person shows for over thirty years, taking people on his unusual journey with productions such as “I’m 27, I Still Live at Home, and I Sell Office Supplies” and “Living in a Dwarf’s House.” But he likes to point out that his latest show, “World’s Greatest Dad (?),” is a story fifty-nine years in the making.
Playing June 16 and 17 at the Laughing Academy in Glenview, “Dad” illuminates the most meaningful period yet in his life. Set when he was fifty-two, the show details the emotional rollercoaster he rode while dealing with his long-estranged dad’s death and becoming a late-in-life father just four months later.
“The show really starts with me starting out in the nineties here in Chicago and all my friends becoming famous and how I was jealous and became bitter because I really wanted to be famous back then,” he recalls. “It was like, one out of four people was becoming famous. I was in classes with Chris Farley and Mike Myers used to sit in on our improv team at the ImprovOlympic, before he went to SNL.
“I also worked with [SNL stars] Rachel Dratch and Tim Meadows, and I was forty and really depressed and I went to a shrink. I was hoping he would put me on a medication to make me famous. And then he suggested I get married and have a kid, and this show is about that and my complicated relationship with my father.”
Photo: Ian McLaren
Carrane grew up in the ritzy suburb of Kenilworth, and was a class clown who admits cheating his way through high school. With college out of the picture, he instead jumped into training in improv at the late, great Players Workshop and the Second City Training Center. He soon became a vital force on the city’s comedy scene, with “27” running for eighteen months at the Annoyance, subsequent shows drawing crowds and acclaim and immense respect in improv shows and as one of the city’s top improv teachers.
But his problems with his father stemmed from childhood when his dad was a high-ranking player in the finance world. He recalls his father as being a workaholic, but things took a dramatic turn for the worse when his dad was sent to prison for three years for embezzlement and mail fraud.
That sentence was the straw that broke the camel’s back for Carrane, and he and his father barely spoke for many years afterwards. But they reconciled when his dad learned he was dying, and wanted his son to give the eulogy at his funeral.
The rest of the family had decidedly different intentions.
“My dad loved that I was always the funny one in the family, but the rest of them were afraid that I would say something about my dad going to prison,” Carrane says. “So they tried to stop me at the church. It’s a whole scene in the show, that they actually had to call the police because I got up on a pew. I was like, ‘I’m going to honor my dad’s wishes and I’m giving the eulogy,’ but someone from behind pushed me off the pew and it just got crazy.
“The priest came running down and then I looked out and I saw two police officers there, and I can’t think of a better tribute to my dad than being arrested. But the priest decided he would let me speak, and then four months later my daughter was born and that became its own trauma.”
Carrane recounts in the show that “what should be the happiest day of your life was stressful, and I didn’t love being a dad.” In fact, he recalls that it took him a year to fall in love with his daughter, but the results have been transformational and proved that his therapist had the right idea all along.
“When I slowly fell in love with my daughter, that fulfilled me in a way that that obsession with fame became less and less,” he says. “She showed me that I had it all wrong with unconditional love. I think for a lot of performers, it’s getting those laughs. But now I was getting love from my daughter that I had never experienced before.”
“World’s Greatest Dad (?)” plays at 7:30pm June 16 and 17 and 9pm June 17 at The Laughing Academy, 3230 Glenview Road, Glenview. Tickets are $25 here or call (847)274-2787.
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