The Article below was published in Vol. 135, Issue 6 of the Lake Forest College Stentor on March 6, 2020.
By Arielle Van Deraa ‘21
Digital Editor
vanderaaas@mx.lakeforest.edu
The stage is simple, lit blue, and nearly bare. There are clothes strewn about, and a microphone, but the most noticeable feature is a toilet.
When the sole performer in the production enters, he is nude. He sits on the toilet limply for a moment, letting the audience sit in the discomfort before he raises his head to speak:
“On August 3, 1966, I was found dead on a toilet.”
From there, he starts to dress, and Lenny Bruce tells us how he got there.
Lenny Bruce was a comedian who was well known for his freestyle and vulgar comedy, for which he was arrested several times. He paved the way for comedians who came after him, but at a heavy financial and mental cost to himself.
But before all that, Ronnie Marmo, who portrays Bruce with masterful elegance, takes us through Bruce’s early life: his relationship with his mother, who supported him every step of the way, and his first show, for which he was so nervous he threw up in the bathroom. The show switches between monologues and actual bits of Bruce’s work, recreated by Marmo. The tone shifts are dictated by simple lighting cues: a bright spotlight center stage to indicate a stand-up set, black stripes to indicate a jail cell, red for a disastrous car crash that nearly kills his wife. Marmo captures Bruce perfectly: his candor, the falling nature of his voice, the way he talked with his hands. He interacts with the audience in an immersive sort of way—during the comedic bits, it’s like you’ve been transported back in time to a comedy club to watch Lenny Bruce perform live. You become part of the set, and you become a part of what’s happening onstage.
His topics for sets range from the profane to the political to the everyday. He talks about controversial subjects instead of just telling jokes. This was a radical shift in the way comedy usually was performed at the time. Bruce talks about sex and racism and swears openly. After an arrest for saying the word “****sucker” he talks about it onstage, explaining that he was arrested because it implied a homosexual act. Tongue in cheek, he refers to the word as “blah blah” instead, and asks the men in the audience if any of them had ever had their “blah blah’d”. It is amusing, but it also makes a point. That is the Lenny Bruce experience.
After the Kennedy assassination, Bruce did a set about how the media was reporting on Jackie Kennedy. He prefaces the set by saying, “You see the trouble is that we live in a happy ending culture. A ‘what should be’ culture instead of a ‘what is’ culture. We’re all taught that fantasy, right? But if we were taught ‘this is what it is’ I think we’d be less screwed up!” He then shows a picture from a magazine of Jackie Kennedy climbing out of the car her husband what shot in, with the caption claiming that she was trying to go get help. “Now, I say these are dirty pictures because the captions are bull****. “Never, for an instant, did she think of flight” That’s bull****. That’s MY conclusion. Time Magazine’s conclusion is that she was trying to get out of the car, to get help, or to help the Secret Service men aboard. That’s their conclusion and we buy it! But I think she did the normal thing, man! When the President got it – bam! And the governor got it – bam! She tried to get the hell out of there! But they want us to believe this bull****! They want my daughter, OUR daughters if their husbands get their faces shot off someday, and they try to haul a** to save their a*****, if they do the NORMAL thing, man. They’re gonna feel guilty and s****y because they’re not like the good women in the fantasy! And that’s a terrible LIE to tell the people!”
For Bruce, the jokes about Jackie Kennedy were his final straw. From there, his life begins to fall apart as he becomes hounded by police for speaking about these topics. He is arrested again and speaks out passionately in court, but it doesn’t work. As he becomes angrier and more unhinged, he throws his tie across the room, a shoe, his jacket: he is getting closer to where the show began, naked and on the toilet, dead of an overdose.
At this point, he does a set talking about the situation, and offstage a member of the audience yells at him that he’s not being funny. “I’m not a comedian,” he says, exhausted, into the mic. “I’m Lenny Bruce.”
I’m Not A Comedian, I’m Lenny Bruce tells at once a tragic life story and a struggle for free speech. We take for granted now that comedians can swear onstage, and talk about politics and social justice and try to make a point with their comedy. This was not always the case, the play brutally reminds us, as Bruce dies of a depression-fueled overdose. “While Lenny technically died of an overdose of morphine, I believe he died of an overdose of the police,” director Joe Mantegna writes in the program. “They hounded this man because he pushed the envelope. To say he was ahead of his time would be an understatement. To me, he was a prophet. When society is threatened by you, they kill you.”
The show ends with names of comedians flashing on the stage, as sound clips of particularly well-known comics like George Carlin talking about vulgar subjects play overhead. We wouldn’t have this without Lenny Bruce, the show says. No one joked about these things then. Comedians who talk about sex, who swear, who talk about societal issues and try to say something with their comedy—all of this was started by Lenny Bruce, who spent his life fighting for the ability to do so. And certainly, while there may be backlash for the things comics say now, they can’t be arrested for it.
Mantegna writes, “I believe there are two times when someone dies. First, when you physically die. And then, when they stop talking about you. I’m happy to report that with this show, Lenny is alive and well.” His conviction for obscenity was pardoned posthumously in 2003, and today, Lenny Bruce is immortalized in the hearts and minds of many. He is a character in the popular Amazon show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and the organization founded by his daughter Kitty, The Lenny Bruce Memorial Foundation, helps recovering addicts and provides substance abuse prevention education.
Editors’ note: Stentor staff received complimentary tickets to attend a showing of I’m Not A Comedian, I’m Lenny Bruce. The show is playing at the Royal George Theater in Chicago through March 29 and lasts 90 minutes. Showtimes are Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., and Sundays at 1 p.m. Students can receive tickets for $20 by entering the code STDNT at checkout.
