Sunday, May 15, 2011

The Hot L Baltimore


photo by Michael Brosilow
Steppenwolf Theater

Initially, I was thinking, "What, it's over? That's it?" And, we started making our way downstairs for the discussion.

At first I wasn't sure I liked it. After the discussion I was pretty sure I did. After dinner and further discussion I was certain I did. I think you can at least admire it, even if you don't love it.

The play is set in the Hotel Baltimore on Memorial Day, 1973. The Hotel Baltimore was a grand, old building in its time, but now it is a worn-down transient hotel. On this day the residents get eviction notices because the building will be torn down. That's the main story. As someone pointed out in the discussion, it's not a play with story - it's a character-driven piece. The point of the play is the characters and their relationships to one another.

At dinner I realized that the lack of the story might be incredibly suitable to the setting. To be transient, to be in-between points in life, is to be lifted out of your story for awhile. To be in the place, you don't need a history and it's not about where you are going next. It is only about the present, making it from one hour to the next, paying bills by the week in advance, only you knowing when you are ready to move to the next stage.

The set was one of the starts of the night. Two stories, almost three, it had a grand, old, run-down lobby on the first floor with a reception desk in the left corner. And, then upstairs there were six rooms you could see into. The action started the moment you walked into the theater and continued through intermission. The actors were interacting the entire time or in their rooms where you could see them.

I ended up liking the ending. We've all been in something that was ending, for instance like a retail job when a store is closing, and the characters all seemed to approach it differently. Here are some of the options as presented in the play: you can quietly slink off leaving someone important behind, you can be forced to leave and not allowed to return, you can find something new to be dependent on, you can wait until the very bitter end and be forced out as a group, or you can die and exit that way.

We all respond differently to and participate in institutions that are dying. The Hotel Baltimore has been dying for some time and now it faces its end. But, there are other institutions that are dying and that doesn't make them any less loved. Their glorious past and their tawdry present are interlinked with no conceivable future on the horizon. And, we love them and pre-mourn them at the same time, taking what we can from them while they still exist.

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