The Hot L Baltimore, Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company, and Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts, Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company. Thanks to director David Cromer and an unimprovable ensemble, it’s difficult to imagine a more authentic world than Lanford Wilson’s transient hotel, complete with rusty water, fickle heat, and fluorescent-lit ambience. A time warp in every grungy detail, Robert G. Smith’s battered lobby fuses with Joseph Fosco’s period sound design and Sarah Pace’s archaeologically accurate costumes to immerse audiences in the world of a dozen hard-boiled residents facing eviction on Memorial Day 1973.
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Rich Cotovsky is as much traffic cop as director, trying to make the script’s random encounters, fragmentary dialogue, and derivative plot amount to something. Claudia Garrison and Leonard Kraft wax maudlin as the old customers, and Justus Woolever is repellently believable as a sexist thug–his manipulation of a sensitive companion comes right out of Sexual Perversity in Chicago. This is more episodic flow than plotted show, but the sheer disconnectedness of these pub crawlers makes a cunning contrast to the warmhearted solidarity of the tenants at the Hot L Baltimore.
