Playwright Charles Pike considers himself a member in good standing of the Lord Buckley cult, though the first time he heard of him was two years ago. He was driving with a friend listening to a compilation of beat poetry when suddenly he heard a peculiar voice. “I wasn’t sure who it was,” Pike says. “I wasn’t sure what he was saying. I thought it was Scatman Crothers at first. And he was talking about the ‘ding-ding players’ and the ‘wang-dang players’ and the ‘reed heads’ and the ‘lute heads’ and the ‘hip Gan.’ As I started to get used to his language, the effect of listening to him and the message he was saying and the words he was using–it was as if the top of my head opened up like a sun dome and the sun shone in the dark corners. And I became obsessed with Lord Buckley.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Vehill talked Pike into turning some of the material he’d collected into a play, Seven Ply Gasser, which will be performed in a workshop production later this month at Prop Theatre’s second annual Midwest New Play Festival and Workshop. The play will get its first public reading this Monday night at the Bailiwick Arts Center.
In his free time Buckley hung out with jazz musicians and strippers, performed comedy in local speakeasies, and made friends, he always claimed, with the likes of Al Capone. One day he visited a bankrupt circus with a friend who was thinking of buying it, and he found an elephant-sized robe encrusted with costume jewelry in a wardrobe trunk. “He put on the robe,” Pike says, “and suddenly he has a vision. He says, ‘Yes, your lordship.’ Bows down. And when he stands up he’s Lord Buckley.”
Pike laughs. “The first night of the show Buckley goes out for his set, and Del and Severn can’t get him off the stage. There are supposed to be two shows that night, people are lining up outside, and Buckley is still onstage talking away. They turn the lights out on him, and he’s going on and on. Finally Del and Severn have to go out onstage and physically lift him up and carry him offstage so they can start the second show.”
