Most upper-middle-class felons would rather not broadcast their prison records to the world. Not Ric Borelli. He’s made his time in the joint the centerpiece of his one-man show, Best Dope in Town, which opens tonight at the ImprovOlympic.
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Unemployed and directionless after high school, reeling from his parents’ messy divorce, Borelli drifted, trying to figure out what to do with his life. “I wandered around the North Shore,” he says, “smokin’ weed, hanging out with my buddies–who were also living at home.” He moved to Florida for a short time, then returned to Illinois, where he shared an apartment with a friend and his mother in Glenview. By then his buddies had moved on from pot and beer to coke, and Borelli found the cost of coke a burden.
“I’m thinking I’m going to be spending 25 bucks here, 50 bucks there on coke. Then my friend told me where I could get a quarter ounce of coke and how to divide it up. I started selling small amounts–half gram, a gram at a time.”
Best Dope in Town opens this Friday, May 25, at 10:30 at the ImprovOlympic’s Del Close Theater, 3541 N. Clark, and runs Fridays through June 29. Tickets are $11; call 773-880-0199 for more information. –Jack Helbig
