Nostalgia for a bygone Chicago has a potent allure. The green lighting of Lower Wacker that once earned it the nickname the Emerald City. The Empire Carpet jingle. The School of the Art Institute basement that housed the Goodman Theatre. The legions of family-owned, independent shops that predated Amazon and Best Buy.
In “Ashland Avenue,” playwright Lee Kirk’s slightly stolid world premiere drama running through Oct. 12 at the Loop’s Goodman Theatre, Chicago’s past looms large. The setting is 2022, at Pete’s TV and Radio, a 40-year-old store located on the titular avenue. The shop is a tattered shadow of its once bustling self, but owner Pete is hellbent on keeping the business going.
The play is directed by Goodman Artistic Director Susan V. Booth and stars Francis Guinan as Pete and Jenna Fischer (arguably best known as Pam Beesly in NBC’s “The Office”) as Pete’s daughter Sam. “Ashland Avenue” delves into Pete’s intractable inability to accept that superstores and the internet have irrevocably altered the retail landscape and the market for Zeniths and Magnavoxes is gone.
Back in the day, Pete had 16 shops dotted across Chicago and was a local celebrity thanks to his iconic advertising jingle (think Bob Rohrman Chevrolet meets Empire Carpet) and community involvement. But after four decades, Pete is down to one store, and it’s hanging on by a thread — one frayed fiber optic wire away from obsolescence.
The core conflict here is predictable: Sam and her husband Mike (Chiké Johnson) are moving to Los Angeles, embracing careers that have nothing to do with selling Panasonics. Yet even when they know they’re being steamrolled, Sam and Mike find Pete’s disarming powers of persuasion all but irresistible.
Kirk’s drama needs substantial tightening. The central argument between Pete and Sam is ardent but repetitive, as is a parallel plot thread involving Jess (Cordelia Dewdney), a struggling millennial that Pete has taken in, along with her children. Jess is trying to disentangle herself from Pete and is weighing returning to her former partner, who struggles with addiction.
Ultimately, the same conversation unfurls again and again: Pete’s loved ones want to forge lives off Ashland Avenue. He wants them to stay. The arguments grow static quickly.
Although often wry, droll and relatable, “Ashland Avenue” also bites off more than it can chew. The ever-changing economy — and how old-school Chicago fixtures like Pete try to navigate it — are central plot themes here. But Kirk also attempts to take on addiction, something that feels awkwardly shoehorned in, especially in a final scene that sets up a way-too-tidy ending. The resolution to Pete’s difficulties seems more contrived than earned. “Ashland Avenue” would be a much better ride with a less facile conclusion.
Unfolding in Pete’s last remaining store, “Ashland Avenue” is stuffed with references to the Chicago of yore, although not everyone in Pete’s orbit gets the references. Jess vaguely has no idea who Studs Terkel was and incorrectly recalls that some guy named “The Appliance” played when the Bears won the Super Bowl.
The performances are credible. As Sam, Fischer dials into the angst of a woman who has devoted a lifetime to her father’s dreams but wants to pursue her own desire to write a book. But the script sometimes works against Fischer, such as a monologue that outlines a terrible, dragon-centric novel idea that is also a laborious extended metaphor. It clunks harder than a Philco hitting a landfill.
Guinan — whose career in Chicago theater exceeds the 40-year span of Pete’s TV — is ideally suited to play a man whose Chicago roots date back to the days when Jane Byrne was a mayor and not an interchange.
Guinan’s Pete is both doddering and wily as a coyote. Like the great Detective Columbo (who gets a shout-out), Pete is one of those unassuming guys who can wheedle into your psyche like a Slim Jim opening a locked car. Guinan makes Pete’s glint-eyed guile shine through his shuffling, stammering persona.
As Sam’s husband Mike, Johnson delivers a wonderfully wild and woolly monologue dealing with Bill Murray, a vacuum and an icy stretch of Ashland Avenue. It’s hilarious, it rings true and it’s a whackadoodle highlight of the production.
Kevin Depinet’s set points to the divide between past and present: a massive Zenith sign hangs alongside a “Sale of the Century” advert, such century clearly being more than two decades gone. A bank of flat screens share space with the small, boxy sets of the 1980s.
“Ashland Avenue” evokes a bygone era as its characters attempt to navigate the future. There’s substance, solid drama and winning comedy here. Edit out the redundancies, and it’ll be the kind of drama every Off-Loop theater in the land will want to get its hands on eventually.
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