Lenny Bruce stage experience to make Pittsburgh debut

PITTSBURGH − First Amendment crusader and foul-mouthed entertainer. Trailblazer and tragic figure.

From comedy club stages to courtrooms, Lenny Bruce sent shock waves through the nation, sparking debates about censorship.

“I believe Lenny’s is the voice this country needs right now,” said Ronnie Marmo, the playwright and actor portraying the standup icon in stage performances Oct. 21-22 at the Byham Theater in Pittsburgh. "With all the talk about The First Amendment, free speech and cancel culture. You'd think we would have progressed by now, but in some ways we've regressed. We're stuck between social media and the morality police. It's hard to do what you want to do."

Marmo said his play, “I'm Not a Comedian... I'm Lenny Bruce," looks at how the controversial comedian's 1960s stage shows broke convention and broached topics very much in the news now, such as religion, racism, immigration, xenophobia, gender inequality, sexual identity, the criminal justice system, bail reform, government aid, corrupt capitalism, the opiate epidemic, marijuana legalization and censorship.

"I could go on and on," he said.

Backed by an original jazz score, Marmo stays in character the entire 90-minute play, including a scene set in Pittsburgh, where Bruce and his wife, Honey, briefly lived, and both nearly died, after a horrific automobile accident at Smallman and 29th streets in the Strip District on Oct. 8, 1951. The Chevy convertible they were driving in collided with a Packard, and both were thrown from the vehicle, suffering serious injuries.

"She got run over twice. That was unbelievable," Marmo said.

In his initial script, Marmo left out the Pittsburgh scene. Though after arriving in New York to run through the lines, "I told the director, Joe Mantegna (a Tony Award winner and voice of Fat Tony on "The Simpsons"), 'The play's missing something, though I'm not sure what it is.'"

That night, Marmo flipped open his copy of Bruce's autobiography, landing on the page where the comedian recalled the Pittsburgh crash. Bruce wrote, "To my horror I saw the Packard ramming my car down the street. The seats were empty and both doors flapped like mechanical wings of death. I saw the back wheels go over Honey’s soft young body. I heard her hips crack like the sound of a Chinese fortune cookie. The next moment the truck, coming behind her, also ran over her.”

Marmo's thoughts when he read that: "This has got to be in the show. I called Joe and he said let's go for it. We dropped it in there during tech week right before opening night."

Bruce and his wife, an ex-stripper-turned-singer, had been earning $600 a week that October 1951, performing a variety show at the former Monte Carlo club at Sixth Street and Penn Avenue, a block away from what's now the Byham.

(Marmo said for his Pittsburgh shows, he will try to add a line referencing that coincidental proximity.)

Forced to extend their Pittsburgh stay for seven weeks while Honey recovered from her injuries, the entertainment couple later moved to California, where Bruce garnered attention for his sharp social commentary and groundbreaking freestyle stage performances that left a lasting impact on not just comedy, but today’s poetry, politics, music and film. His unfaltering dedication to free speech, and refusal to clean up his language, led to multiple obscenity charges and arrests. Bruce fought for freedom of speech clear to the Supreme Court. In 1966, while awaiting an appeal, he died of an accidental overdose.

A year later, Bruce's legacy landed him on the cover of the Beatles' masterpiece "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Bruce also is referenced in songs by Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, Genesis, R.E.M. and Broadway's "Rent."

"He died way too young, at 40, but he affected a lot of things; The First Amendment, poetry, comedy," Marmo said. "He was always fighting for what was right in front of him and what he believed in. He generally was fighting for people he felt had no voice."

In Marmo's mind, "he was the most important counterculture person of our time.

"Lenny Bruce felt you should be able to say what you want, but he understood there would be consequences. If you say something bad about your boss, you could get fired."

The responsibilities of free speech is a topic debated regularly on social media.

Marmo speculates Bruce would have thought Facebook was "ridiculous," conceding it does bring some positives.

"It's let me keep in touch with people I haven't seen in 40 years. But the problem is, social media has now become the judge and jury for everything," he said. "That's where it went south."

Through a course of many conversations, Marmo forged a friendship with Bruce's daughter, Kitty, who has bestowed her blessings upon the stage play.

"I'll be polite: Previous productions about Lenny haven't done right by Kitty," he said. "It took me years of introductions and meetings, but now I have her complete blessing. She's family at this point. She feels like I'm not just doing a gig, it feels like something bigger is going on. That I'm continuing a conversation for her dad."

A portion of the show’s proceeds goes to the Lenny Bruce Memorial Foundation, assisting those who don’t have insurance or the ability to get treatment for drug and alcohol addiction.

When conceiving the show, Marmo envisioned his audience would be an older demographic. He didn't foresee the 2017 arrival of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," the award-winning Amazon Prime dramedy where the titular character, a late-1950s housewife-turned-comedian, is befriended by Bruce.

Has "Mrs. Maisel" rekindled an interest in Bruce?

"One million percent," Marmo said. "They do a very nice version of him. I got nothing but respect for that. And it's opened up an incredible amount of interest among this current generation. I did a show recently in Tampa, and there was like a dozen 22-year-old girls in the front row."

Critics and celebrities alike have raved about the show. Examples: “perfectly inflected performance" (Los Angeles Times); "even the most devoted Bruce fan will leave impressed with Marmo” (Chicago Tribune), “Funny, fierce, tragic…vividly brings to life the comedian we so miss today.” (Billy Crystal); "I was riveted by Ronnie… It had such an impact on me" (Patti LuPone).

"I've got praise from some heavy hitters," Marmo, whose TV credentials range from "Criminal Minds" and "JAG" to a three-year run on ABC’s “General Hospital” as Ronnie Dimestico, said.

"With other Lenny Bruce presentations you get the bitter man, angry and at the end of his rope, but with my show, you meet the whole man, and go on his whole journey with him," Marmo said.

"It's not a comedy, it's a tragedy, but there's a lot of laughs. A LOT of laughs. I tell people to experience it If you're looking for a full night of beautiful theater that'll keep you thinking for weeks to come. I hear from total strangers who say they saw the show weeks ago, but they're still thinking about Lenny Bruce."

Tickets for the Oct. 21-22 Pittsburgh shows cost $42.50 to $65 at 412-456-6666 or TrustArts.org. The show includes strong language and nudity, and is intended for mature audiences.

New York-raised, L.A.-dwelling Marmo is so stoked for his show's Pittsburgh debut, he will arrive in town a week early, and stay an extra night, mainly to see the Pittsburgh Steelers.

"I'm like a Steelers freak," he said, tracing his fandom to his childhood memories of stars Rocky Bleier and Franco Harris.

Marmo scored tickets for the Acrisure Stadium game versus Tom Brady's Tampa Bay Buccanneers on Oct. 16, and will stay in town through the Steelers' Oct. 23 road game against Miami "just so I can watch a game in a real Steelers bar."

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Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and reachable at stady@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Lenny Bruce stage experience makes Pittsburgh debut