Pam Dickler Photo by Corey Henry

Andy Breitbart, founder of The Breitbart Report, was one of the most well-known right wing political pundits of his era. As Obama was running for re-election in 2012, Breitbart came across a piece of information that he felt could seriously hurt Obama's chances: at a 1998 staging of a play called The Love Song of Saul Alinsky (about the man credited with being the father of community organizing), Obama–then a local politician who had been a community organizer himself–agreed to take part in a talkback session. Obsessive ultra-right commentators and conspiracy theorists, who had been trying to tie Obama to their bogeyman, Alinsky (they saw him as a communist, and Bill O'Reilly had compared him with Marx and Lenin), since before his first run for the presidency, finally thought they had found a smoking gun. All they needed to do was to get their hands on the recording of that talkback and they'd surely find incriminating responses from the young not-yet-president.

The problem, as Dickler, then the managing director of the theatre company, truthfully told them was that the session was never even recorded. Of course, being conspiracy theorists, they did not believe her. Breitbart and others, including a young Ben Shapiro and Sean Hannity, tried to smear Obama with the connection, and Dickler was caught in the middle. Suddenly, this woman who ran a relatively unheralded Chicago storefront theatre company found herself a peripheral target of a high-level smear campaign.

Dickler, a pleasant woman, easygoing woman with a friendly affect, tells this story in a clear, straightforward way. Her presentation is enhanced by video imagery showing some of the subjects of her play and highlighting some of the quotes she offers us. These quotes, from various sources, are read by audience members from prepared cards. (Dickler makes excellent use of her disarming personality as she walks out into the seats to hand them out.) Most of them offer clarifying or ironic commentary on what she is discussing at the moment.

Her set is simple: a small podium, a floor lamp, a chair, and an old Chicago Tribune news box, which she returns to frequently to grab small props, including the quotation cards. Despite the video monitor, this is not a high-tech production but a highly personal one. In our era, when the government too often targets individuals it views as "enemies," it's all too easy to imagine the stress she was feeling, knowing that these men had millions of followers who were being told that she was helping a cover-up. And then, when Breitbart suddenly died while walking home one night, the conspiracy theorists went bananas.

Drew Martin's confident direction and sound design keep this engrossing story moving forward, and Kenneth Martin's understated lighting highlights it perfectly. But it is writer/performer Dickler herself who carries the weight of the show, and she does it brilliantly. It's not often that one finds a writer who is the best person conceivable to tell her own tale, but Dickler is certainly one of them. This small show in this intimate setting unfolds with humor, seriousness, and importance as well as the incredible reality that this woman actually lived it all. She and her show are both remarkable.

I Killed Andy Breitbart runs through September 27, 2026, at the Apollo Theater studio, 2550 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago IL. For tickets and information, please visit www.apollochicago.com.