Lenny Bruce is back, in the form of Ronnie Marmo, and performing in Skokie

Lenny Bruce is coming back to town. Though on previous visits he mainly kept to the city, this time he’ll be in Skokie.

Though dead for nearly 60 years, the controversial and influential comic will arrive in the form of Ronnie Marmo, a wickedly talented actor who has written and stars in the play “I’m Not a Comedian ... I’m Lenny Bruce,” which he is presenting at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts.

“I love Chicago,” said Marmo from his home in Los Angeles. “The audiences are smart and demanding and that energizes me every time I step on stage there.”

He has learned a lot about our audiences because he has been tightly tied to Joe Mantegna, the director of the show since its birth some six years ago.

You certainly have heard of Mantegna, a child of Cicero and a Chicago theater legend before going on to Broadway (winning a Tony award in David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross”), movie and television stardom.

And you might have heard of this show, perhaps even seen it, since it enjoyed two successful runs here, first at the Royal George Theatre for five months, which the pandemic ended in March 2020. It came back in October 2021 and settled in for a few months at the Venus Cabaret at the Mercury Theater.

My colleague Chris Jones wrote of the initial run, “even the most devoted Bruce fan will leave impressed with Marmo. ... (His) great achievement is his ability to replicate not just Bruce’s essential vulnerability, a sweet neediness that made him seek constant relief, but his furious mind, forever fated to rail about the lack of intellectual honesty in America.”

Bruce’s daughter, Kitty has called the show, “The best portrayal of my father I have ever seen,” a crowd that includes Dustin Hoffman in his Academy Award-nominated title role in 1974′s film “Lenny.”

For the last year or so, Marmo has been touring the show nationally, playing short runs in such cities as Toronto, Tampa, West Palm Beach and Pittsburgh. The crowds have been much larger than the 90 seats he was able to fill at the Royal George (closed for keeps) and Venus Cabaret (still open). He is not worried about playing to the North Shore Center’s 867 seats.

“There will always be an intimacy to this show,” he says. “We weren’t sure of that when we started playing bigger houses but in Pittsburgh we played to 1,600 seats and it worked exceedingly well.”

He says he and Mantegna are always tinkering with the show. “There is a rich amount of material and we live in a world that is ever-changing, especially over the last few years. I do know that comedy is what we need. If we can’t laugh, our other options are to remain neutral or cry. As Lenny once said, ‘The only honest art form is laughter, comedy.’”

The show is spiced with considerable humor but also with some tragedy. Much of Bruce’s humor retains, even after all these years, a serious and thought-provoking punch.

One of Bruce’s most famous routines is gone for good. This was his take on a racial slur, a verbal riff intended to rob that word of its painful power. When hearing Bruce’s routine for the first time in 1962, Black comic Dick Gregory reportedly said, “This man is the eighth wonder of the world.”

Gregory’s son Christian Gregory saw Marmo’s show and the routine and thought it appropriate but times change. “I can’t be tone deaf to the world we are living in,” says Marmo. “And it didn’t seem fair that a two-minute-long routine might give people a skewed view of what Lenny really was all about.”

Marmo tells me there are new routines in the show. He tells me he has performed the show 424 times, and counting, but “It is such a monster of a play, this 90 minutes all by myself. But every time I walk out on that stage I feel an energy from the audience. "

He tells me the next stops for the show are Houston and San Diego. He tells me he’s been talking to theaters in London.

He then tells me of another change in his life.

It has its roots in Chicago. Janelle Gaeta was here from New York on business when her dinner plans with a friend fell through. She searched the internet looking for something to do. She found a listing for “I’m Not a Comedian …” and read some favorable reviews. She took a cab to the Royal George, bought the last ticket, sat in the front row and loved the show.

Afterward, as is his practice, Marmo was in the theater lobby chatting and posing for pictures with audience members. “It was November 8, 2019, and when I first saw her,” he says. “I thought, “Oh, man, here goes the next three decades of my life.”

She was similarly smitten. They courted long distance, he in L.A., she in New Jersey, often spending hours at a time talking. She flew to L.A. They spent time together and they were married in July 2022.

It was, in a sense, another Mantegna directorial effort.

“He got ordained just so he could officiate at our wedding,” Marmo says.

His wife will be coming to Skokie. She’s seen the show dozens of times, saying, “And I never get tired of watching it.”

2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Sept. 9 at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; tickets $34-$70 at 847-673-6300 and www.northshorecenter.org

rkogan@chicagotribune.com