Time off will make him Tingle

As recently as this summer Jimmy Tingle was still on the fence about whether to continue operating his Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway theater in Somerville. He was performing in Edinburgh, when he got the news that his Davis Square club had just been voted Best Alternative Theater venue by "Boston" magazine, and he said, "That's a sign!"

But in the end, omens were no match for reality. And Tingle realized he didn't have the energy it would take to run the theater for another year, and he opted out of the lease that expires on Oct. 31.

"Last year was the toughest," says Tingle, who opened the theater in 2002. "You get physically worn down. For five years it was always on my mind. It was like owning a restaurant, but it was a restaurant where the menu changed every weekend, sometimes every night."

He'll close the doors at a time when running a theater is particularly difficult in these parts. "When the Red Sox are on, nobody goes to the theater," he says. "When it snows, nobody comes."

When asked about his proudest achievement with the theater, the entertainer gets very practical: "Just the fact that we survived for five years and we paid our bills. Everyone got paid - not a lot," he adds with a laugh, "but they got paid."

But then he remembers something that happened when Mort Sahl played his club in 2005. Sahl came off the stage and said, "That could be the best audience I ever had."

"And he's been performing for 50 years," says Tingle. "That was awesome."

Tingle says he's looking forward to pursuing his own projects, including his new show, "Jimmy Tingle for President" at a venue TBA. But mostly he just wants to relax and enjoy the "5,000 books" he's bought, but hasn't had a chance to read.

"I went into the mayor's office the other day, and I saw the Truman book on his desk, and I said, 'Oh I have that book'," remembers Tingle. "I also have the one on Lincoln. The one on George Washington. And the one on John Adams. And I'm on page eight of all of them."