In the name of the father

Our condolences are extended to two of our New York ambassadors this week as they mourn the passing of their fathers. Over the weekend The Theater Loop reported the death of Dennis Letts, following a battle with lung cancer. Letts, of course, is the father of Steppenwolf’s Tracy Letts, who wrote August: Osage County, in which Dennis played the suicidal patriarch of an Oklahoma family thrown into chaos after his death. The senior Letts’s role was a cameo, and a delicious one at that, which he also played on Broadway. The character he played was, like the man himself, a well-regarded populist intellectual.

Those who caught him in August got to see something rare: Life enjoying imitating art.

Meanwhile, at a smaller theater downtown, director David Cromer had almost finished preparations on the New York transfer of Next Theatre’s The Adding Machine. The production opens officially tonight after about three weeks of previews, but Cromer will be in Newport Beach, California, mourning his father Richard, who died last Wednesday of complications from lymphoma. “My dad was alive, but he decided to go another way,” a tired but unflaggingly cynical Cromer said yesterday from the Denver airport.

Both Letts and Cromer had banner-year accomplishments in 2007, and 2008 holds many potential rewards/awards for their efforts. But I imagine trophies and critical hosannas won’t matter much to either of them for a while.

There’s a silly, jingoistic city pride, in which we all participate, whenever a Chicago-created show finds success elsewhere. But as much as Chicagoans' chests swell for August and Adding Machine, this week we’re most proud of Dennis Letts and Richard Cromer. Without their work, we wouldn’t have that of their sons.

We wish their families comfort in this strangest of periods, mourning in the wake of creative success.