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The HOT L Baltimore
by Lanford Wilson
Directed by Victor Pappas
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th Street, NYC
May 6, 7, & 8, 2006
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| SYNOPSIS |
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The Hotel Baltimore is seedy, run-down, and slated for demolition. Over the course of one day, the group of residents who call the Baltimore home, meet, talk, and play out the everyday encounters that make up the human comedy. The resulting mosaic is a poignant, though often hilarious plea for a return to a kinder and gentler world. |
| CAST/CREW |
Scott Schafer*
Bill Lewis
Delphi Harrington*
Millie
Cynthia Darlow*
Mrs. Bellotti
Elizabeth Meadows Rouse*
April Green
James Prendergast*
Mr. Morse
Richard Ferrone*
Suzy?s John
Jamie Bennett*
Paul Granger III
Nora Chester*
Mrs. Oxenham
Richard Ferrone*
Cab Driver
Richard Ferrone*
Pizza Delivery
Seth Fruyterman
Accordian/Vocals
Suzanne Chesney
Costumes by
Mary Louise Geiger
Lighting Designer
Jamie Rose Thoma
Production Stage Manager
Shelly Tseng
Assistant Director
Music Composed by John Slover
*member Actors' Equity Association |
| PRESS |
Wolf Entertainment Guide
The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) usually digs further back into theater history for its staged... [ read more]
New York Calling/Wolf Entertainment
The Actors Company Theatre (TACT) usually digs further back into theater history for its staged... [ read more]
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| DRAMATURGY |
September 5th, 1975 marked Lanford Wilson?s award-winning comedy The Hot L Baltimore?s 1026th performance at the Circle in the Square. That evening The Hot L Baltimore took the record of the longest running Off-Broadway play from One Flew Over the Cuckoo?s Nest and entered into the annuls of theatre history. It went on to play 1,166 performances and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the Best American Play of 1972?73, the John Gassner Playwriting Award, an Obie Award for Best Off-Broadway play, and an Outer Critics Award. The production featured Trish Hawkins, and Helen Stenborg, and was instrumental in kickstarting the careers of Judd Hirsch and Conchata Ferrell. The characters and premise were also spun off into a television sit-com.
The Hot L Baltimore was Lanford Wilson?s first major success in playwriting, yet many critics did not agree about this work. Some felt it cannot be confined to the word ?play? and its conventions of linear plot. As one critic described it, The Hot L Baltimore is a ?poetic drawing-together of a dull reality that becomes almost symphonic as characters enter and exit.? Some said the play glorified the misguided, the ridiculous, the painted, and un-heroic mass of humanity. Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times, however, opined ?It is a hymn, a cheer, a dirge?a terrible and wonderful evocation of tarnished beauties and drowned glories, of lost dignity and a heartbreakingly quenched spirit of life.? John Lahr of the Village Voice praised Wilson, writing, ?[he] catches in dialogue the kernel of his characters? central fantasy and then orchestrates these dream tones into a concert of loneliness and laughter.? While critic T. E. Kanlen queried ?Why do U.S. playwrights and audiences regard derelicts as exotic romantics? Why should the dregs of society be regarded as the ultimate repositories of its wisdom? Why is a kinky personality presumed to be a rich one? And, finally, how much of theatre-going has become a jaded form of slumming in which the middle-class playgoer gawks and laughs at perverse creatures that he would studiously skirt on the streets?? Reviews however did not concern Lanford Wilson; he once said ?I don?t give a damn anymore. I just write what I write.?
Lanford Wilson was born in Lebanon, Missouri on April 13, 1937. He was raised in the Ozarks until he was a teenager when he moved to California to live with his father. He attended the University of Chicago and, upon graduation, moved to New York City where he soon became involved with a group of artists at the Caf? Cino, one of many tiny coffeehouses Off-Off-Broadway that presented edgy, avant-garde works. There, Wilson met director Marshall W. Mason, who would become his long-time collaborator. His first play, Home Free, a one-act, was presented at the Caf? Cino in 1963. Other plays quickly followed, including Ludlow Fair and The Madness of Lady Bright. He soon moved to Off-Broadway when, in 1964, his ground breaking play, Balm in Gilead, directed by Mason, was presented at Caf? La Mama. The Rimers of Eldrich, another collaboration with Mason, followed the next year.
In 1969, Wilson and Mason co-founded the Circle Repertory Company (better known as Circle Rep) with friends Tanya Berezin and Robert Thirkell. The Circle Repertory Company became a stepping stone for many of Wilson?s plays before they went on to commercial glory on Broadway and elsewhere. Membership in the company became a coveted position among actors in New York and the Circle Lab, a teaching and workshop off-shoot of the company, spawned many new works. Among the company?s members were Judd Hirsch, Jeff Daniels, Zane Lasky, Barnard Hughes, William Hurt, Conchata Ferrell, Christopher Reeve, Tony Roberts and Fritz Weaver. Wilson worked with the Circle Repertory Theatre until the doors were finally closed in 1996.
Other Wilson/Mason collaborations include: Serenading Louie (1970), which focuses on two young suburban couples facing the unhappiness at the heart of their marriages; The Mound Builders (1975), in which an archeological dig sets the stage for a fascinating meditation on a university scientist?s past and present; Angels Fall (1982), in which a group of strangers come together in a small mission church in a remote part of New Mexico to face their own mortality in the wake of a possible nuclear accident; and Talley?s Folly (1979), which went on to a successful Broadway run and for which Wilson won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics? Circle Award.
Wilson has written over seventeen full-length plays and more that thirty one-acts, and has been nominated for Broadway?s Tony Award three times: in 1980 for Talley?s Folly, in 1981 for Fifth of July and in 1983 for Angels Fall.
As in The Hot L Baltimore, many of Wilson?s plays were focused on truths that can be difficult to swallow. Much of his work focuses on the deeply pathetic and characters who are among the disenfranchised. Despite this, Wilson is able to pull audiences into his dramatic universe and make his poetic ?losers? empathic, proud and wise.
In 1975, television producer Norman Lear and ABC introduced what many hoped would be the next big comedy: a TV sit-com based on The Hot L Baltimore. The series changed and added characters inhabiting the hotel lobby ? several of them being rather controversial. Two of the main characters were prostitutes (one of whom was also an illegal alien), and the series brought to America?s living room the first gay male couple ever to be seen on a television series. Despite an excellent cast, which included James Cromwell, Richard Masur, Charlotte Rea and Conchata Ferrell (recreating the role of April, which she originated in the play), the ABC comedy lasted only 13 episodes.
Lanford Wilson continued to write successful plays through the 1980s. Burn This premiered on Broadway in 1987 with a cast that included Joan Allen, John Malcovich, and Circle Rep members Lou Libertore and Jonathan Hogan. The production received two 1988 Tony Award nominations and two Drama Desk Award nominations with Allen winning the Tony that year for her performance. Interestingly, although Malcovich was poised on the crest of stardom and received a huge amount of attention for his dynamic work in the play, it was Eric Roberts, who replaced Malcovich, who won a Theatre World Award for his performance. The 1990s saw something of a decline in Wilson?s luster and output. His play, Redwood Curtain, was a commercial failure in 1993 and many critics thought that ?his sentimental portraits of eccentric, dispossessed outsiders belonged to an earlier time, an era still flavored with the individual-worshiping whimsy of the 1960?s.? Nevertheless, Wilson?s plays continue to be included on reading lists for American Drama courses throughout the country, and his work was showcased in the 2002 season of Signature Theatre here in New York City and included two New York premieres: Book of Days and Rain Dance.
Mr. Wilson is alive and well and living in Texas.
TACT NYC, May 2006
WORKS
Home Free (1963)
Ludlow Fair (1966)
The Madness of Lady Bright (1966)
Balm in Gilead (1964)
The Rimers of Eldrich (1965)
The Gingham Dog (1968)
Lemon Sky (1970)
The Hot L Baltimore (1973)
The Mound Builders (1975)
Fifth of July (1979)
Talley's Folly (1979)
A Tale Told (1981)
(later revised and renamed Talley & Son)
Angels Fall (1982)
Burn This (1987)
Redwood Curtain (1993)
Sympathetic Magic (1998)
Book of Days (2000)
Rain Dance (2003) |
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