If you got through last winter without looking at least once at real estate listings in San Diego, you’re made of sturdier stuff than I am. But we both have a leg up on lifelong Chicagoan Tony Fitzpatrick, who announces in his latest collagelike show—the fourth and final installment in a series that began with This Train in 2010—that he’s decamping for New Orleans.
What he longs for is the Chicago of Nelson Algren, Studs Terkel, and Mike Royko—a gritty, noisy, built-from-nothing sort of place inhabited by a colorful cast of hustlers, charlatans, bar-stool philosophers, and salt-of-the-earth types. Fitzpatrick’s best stories have this same kind of hard-boiled beauty, whether he’s recalling the gut-busting pleasures of now-vanished restaurants or memorializing a maternal Ukrainian neighbor.
Through 10/19: Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 5 and 8 PM, Sun 6 PM Steppenwolf Theatre Merle Reskin Garage Theatre 1624 N. Halsted 312-335-1650 steppenwolf.org $25
