Bad Rock and Roll with a little bizarre Goodman Theater on the side

If you are going to be spending a weeknight in Chicago, you have to leave before rush hour or consider yourself screwed. Ally and I hustled ourselves out in my car, parking in the north loop. We had a few hours to kill before we indulged in two free tickets to The Goodman Theater production of a lesser known Tennessee Williams play called Camino Real. More to come of that shit storm of bizarre that would make Dali’s head spin. 

In River North I had the desire, as we took in the cool upper 50’s air, to walk to our destination. Being on a budget, I fought the urges to not dive into one of many great sets of restaurant doors. Being a good boyfriend I let Ally use the two Hard Rock Café gift cards that her father gave her for our early dinner. My disposition towards these chains has changed considerably since I was a child, where the flash and glamour override the obvious flaws at even calling these places restaurants and allowing them to pass health codes. Though, Ally made an excellent point by saying, “People don’t go there for the food…they go there for entertainment and whatever they throw up on the walls.”

The Hard Rock Café Chicago reminds me a bygone classical age of rock where loud, audacious, and all around kick-ass tunes justified all the debauchery and sin from oddballs not cut out for any conformity within American and British life of the 20^th Century. My spirits were lifted when the constant stream of music videos (ala VH1 or early MTV) played a rip-roaring Smashing Pumpkins song from Gish and then a few choice hair metal songs. Where was Bowie, Ray Charles, or Freddie Mercury? They were on the walls, but not to be played, only remembered. 

Letting my guard down, I ordered the so-called local special burger mixed with Italian beef toppings. Heavy on the salt, light on the flavor with nothing to balance out the burger I was only disgusted further when I found a hair in the meat. No, I didn’t continue eating, treating the charred puck that I requested to be medium to turn into an episode of Bizzare Foods. It turns out that the Hard Rock Café is merely the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, just with revolting food.  Now you know I wouldn’t fully mind a chain as long as they make the effort to have a recent array of flavors and were light on the thematic. 

Light on the thematic is not what occurred in the Camino Real show Ally and I saw thanks to my good friend Mike’s girlfriend, Claudette. The two of them liked the show, more so for Claudette having done some sound design. The unique uses of lighting design, from LED lights in the stage and back walls, to capping mirror balls with frightening key-lights that cast a horror below was hauntingly unique. That’s where my appreciation stops. Camino Real was more than art for art’s sake – it was the worst Samuel Becket, wrapped in layers of Rothko, with existentialism of a art school student who only wants to make the world understand the twisted soul of an artist. People are twisted in their own special way - artists only seem worse because we make it our life’s work to document our twisted souls into art, literature, film, music, and so on. There were endless moments of blathering dialogue, reminiscent of a conversation with philosophers Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sarte that led to nothing but dead ends and almost useless sexually charged imagery. 

The make believe town was run by creeps, whores of every type, nymphomaniac cops, and masochistic hotel owners that all wedged themselves into the most uneven story I’ve seen in years. Ally and I turned to each other at least four times, whispering “I have no idea what is happening?” At one moment she had to suppress a laugh when the hotel owner cut open a man’s chest to remove his heart and I threw my hands to my forehead, whispering “What the fuck is going on with this show?” For the over a hundred in the crowd who stood up at the end and clapped furiously, I couldn’t repress my feelings by asking them “really?”  I never thought I’d say this but to make some sense of this world again, I need to watch Samuel Beckett. 

After a little after party and a stroll down Wacker Drive with Ally before we drove home, the lights of the city high-rises reminded us that even a mediocre meal and a batshit insane show with really good people like each other and my friends was better than sitting home and watching TV night after night as so many of us find ourselves doing all of our lives.