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Pete the TV salesman, the lead character in the new play “Ashland Avenue,” is one of those Chicago celebrities like Bert Weinman “your TV Ford man” or the Empire Carpet guy.
You know the type—he had a zany commercial with a jingle that sticks forever in your head. He called himself “Cray-ay-ay-ay-ay-zy Pete.” He got to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade and throw out the first pitch at a Cubs game.
Of course, this was years ago. Now, Amazon and big-box stores have decimated Pete’s business. He is down from a chain to just his original location on Ashland, dingy and dated, with hanging plants, Christmas lights two months out of season, and a carpet ruined by dirt and slush.
This is the setting for a consistently funny, touching and well-acted tale about what happens when the dreams of the parent must make way for the dreams of the child. The fact that the story is familiar and predictable does not make it less moving and true.
Jenna Fischer, who is the wife of playwright Lee Kirk and starred in the TV show “The Office,” plays Pete’s daughter, Sam. Sam is reserved, tightly wound, and always questioning, while her father, played by veteran Chicago actor Francis Guinan, is boisterous, bossy and always playing an angle. Sam grew up in the shop and now wants to go to Los Angeles with her husband, Mike, an exuberant graphic novelist played by Chiké Johnson. Pete tries to talk them out of it. Earthquakes! Traffic! Sam is too afraid to tell him that they’ve already bought a condo, and that Pete’s business is dead.
Mixed into this family plot is Pete’s former employee and live-in companion Jess (Cordelia Dewdney), who has two young children Pete adores as the grandchildren Sam never gave him. There’s also a young man (Will Allan) with a drug problem.
There’s not much plot—Pete works on his speech for a special award ceremony with the mayor. He gives his prized baseball, signed by the 1989 Cubs roster, to Jess to give to her son. We worry as soon as it goes into her purse, as though it were Chekhov’s gun. Sam snipes with her dad and tries to work up the courage to tell him the truth about her dreams of leaving town and writing a novel.
Directed by Goodman Theatre artistic director Susan V. Booth, the play works because of the strength of the dialogue, strong pacing, good ensemble work and the deep commitment of all the actors to their parts. Guinan in particular creates a fully realized human being on stage—Pete is annoying and irascible in the way of an old man who was once famous and can’t handle the fading of his star. But he is never a cartoon or cliché—he is all of us, mourning the passage of time and the loss of community in the modern, web-based world. “It was my life, and I didn’t appreciate it,” he marvels. He gripes that Jeff Bezos would never sit down to watch a Bears game with his customers, as Pete would every autumn Sunday.
The crowd-drawing Fischer seems a little faded in the first act compared to the dynamic Guinan. But it becomes clear that this reserve is a trait of Sam’s character, not a fault of Fischer’s acting. Sam comes into her own in the second half, insisting on her right to self-determination.
A star of the production is Kevin Depinet’s incredible set—with details like antique televisions in the display case and a neon sign outside the window, pointing customers inside.
The show is crammed with Chicago details. There’s a reference to Pete’s conversation with Studs Terkel, a photo of Bill Murray on the wall, the Sox-Cubs rivalry, the winter wind, and mentions of the Bears, the Hawks and the Bulls. But it feels genuine, not surface-level. Pete and Mike aren’t doing Malört shots like tourists.
This isn’t a big story—it’s not the end of the whole world. But it’s the end of somebody’s world. And in its careful, loving particularity, “Ashland Avenue” embraces us all.
“Ashland Avenue” runs through October 12 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn. Tickets are $33-$148, available at goodmantheatre.org.
