HOT L BALTIMORE
at Stage Left Theatre
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Which is why it was such a joy, 30 minutes or so into Griffin Theatre’s production of Lanford Wilson’s Hot L Baltimore, to realize that two characters were having a conversation on one side of the stage, more people were having another conversation on the other, and elsewhere on the set, another person was speaking out loud into a telephone. This does not present the audibility problems one might anticipate–we hear snippets of all the talk, just as we would in an actual roomful of people. By the end of the first act, the stage is filled with no less than nine people, all doing things and talking simultaneously. That’s something that can only be done in live theater.
The energy-efficiency prizes, however, go to the Laurel and Hardy team of George Lugg and Kevin Farrell, as the curmudgeonly Mr. Morse and the childlike Jamie. Both play their roles with so much concentration and economy–watch the oh-so-leisurely escalation of a checker game into a hand-to-hand tussle–that their characters remain memorable long after the others have faded. Jim Cantafio as the gruff hotel manager, Mr. Katz, Lisa Collins as his priggish assistant, Mrs. Oxenham, and Patrick Hatton as Paul Granger III seem still unacquainted with their characters, but deliver solid and workmanlike performances nonetheless–unlike Jean Elliot Campbell, whose doting Mrs. Bellotti is caricature from beginning to end.
This examination can get pretty heavy, too. In one sketch, “The More Things Change,” Romeo and Juliet consider the possibility of eloping straightaway after the balcony scene and preventing the tragedy and bloodshed they know will follow. After debating their alternatives, they sorrowfully conclude that there is no solution but to go on. “You’ve got to stay and face the pain without getting angry and killing,” Juliet declares. “That’s how he wrote it, and until we have the strength to make up a better story, all we can do is try to see the beauty in the suffering . . . See you in act three.” Other sketches concern the efforts of two grown sons to communicate with their elderly father, a Kansas farmer’s displacement by a dog-food factory, and a young boxer’s loss of ambition.
