Low-rent fun

Alias Stage's winning Hot l Baltimore

by Bill Rodriguez

THE HOT L BALTIMORE. By Lanford Wilson. Directed by Anthony Estrella. At Alias Stage through March 15.

Whatever happened to a playwright being able to push a bunch of colorful characters out onto the stage without our being suspicious of their intentions? If anybody could it's Lanford Wilson, and he did so in winsome style with his first popular play, The Hot l Baltimore, back in 1973. Alias Stage is currently bringing these low-rent denizens to vibrant life in a brisk, unsentimental production.

You've got your grab-bag of denizens, as seedy and comical as the ramshackled Hotel Baltimore itself. (We can picture the "e" missing from the neon sign outside). You've got your whore with a heart of gold, your doddering codger, your sagacious oldster, your angry young rebel. What rescues us all from TV sitcomdom is that you also have Wilson, who would get a Pulitzer seven years later for similarly uncontrived characterizations in Talley's Folly, although the strings do show on the plot.

It's a day-in-the-life of some urban losers, a show-and-tell session of hopes and illusions. The play casually accomplishes much of what You Can't Take It With You, another Pulitzer winner, did in 1936, it captures a zeitgeist. The Depression-era comedy tried to cheer Americans with a quirky family who showed that the important things in life have beating hearts. In 1973 The Hot l Baltimore was between hard-edged eras. On the wane was the peace-and-love hippie era, just ahead was the height of the feel-good disco craze. At the time the Vietnam War was deteriorating and the Nixon administration was stonewalling. Shaky cultural and social times make it easier to appreciate the simple things in life, such as simple people.

More than a dozen characters saunter, stomp and stream through the shabby lobby of the once-grand hotel, which is facing demolition soon, like so much else at the time. Millie (Enedina Garcia) is an amiable retiree who speaks with fondness, though not longing, of a more gracious era back in the Baton Rouge of her youth. Mr. Morse (Elliot Cohan) is a doddering, short-tempered old coot who would as soon whack you with a checker board as argue with you. Mrs. Bellotti (Hope Pilkington) is ineffectively cajoling for her ne'er-do-well son to return to his room. He may be an alcoholic thief crazy enough to try to sell the phone in his room back to the desk clerk, but she'll give it a shot. (A quietly delightful moment is when she comes down the stairs, moving out his things, with an unaccountable pair of bicycle tires atop a laundry basket, which silently undercuts the high emotion of an exchange just concluded. As elsewhere, director Anthony Estrella lets honest sentiments rather than sentimentality propel things along.)

The prostitutes run the gamut. April Green is a snarl with a skirt on, fearsome even when she's complaining to the front desk about orange water. Kate Lohman supports her with a steely backbone rather than a mean streak, so that by the end were as fond of her spunk as we are scared of it. In platform shoes and net stockings, Suzy (Jeanine Kane) blows hot and cold, if you'll pardon the expression, as apt to get all huggy as all hostile. Dysfunctional family flashback, anyone?

A breath of fresh air breezing through all three acts is billed only as The Girl (Molly Lloyd). Most recently going as Billie Jean, she looks 16, claims to be 19 and has all the optimism of a doted-upon child. (That this doesn't come across as impossible optimism might be seen as the entire purpose of the play. Lloyd is terrific, making her smart and not simply naïve.) Billie Jean takes it upon herself to help Paul Granger III (Chris Byrnes) find his grandfather, who used to live at the hotel and has since disappeared.

The other central story is that of a teenage brother and sister, Jamie and Jackie, staying there while they get some money together to drive off to their dream of homesteading in Utah. Annie McNamara and Giedrius Sruogis are as riveting to watch as Lloyd, in their polar-opposite roles. Jamie is a bit slow-witted but he's no pushover when he knows he's right, as Mr. Morse learns in a checker game. Apparently he gets that from sister Jackie, and McNamara gives her a practically feral protectiveness toward her brother. The two young actors have created captivating performances, as well as characters, that fit together like yin and yang symbols.

Scenic design by Jen Zeyl sets a chilly backdrop cleverly with Cyclone fencing for walls. That's amplified hauntingly by Amy Nichol's black and white scenic painting, mostly huge Hopperesque images of lonely women at cityscape windows. There's a light touch throughout this production. For example, there are love beads and bellbottoms on only one character, a pizza delivery man (Gary Cummings). I guess when you can draw on as much substance as is at hand here, with such writing, acting and directing talent, there's no need for superficial stereotypes.