Playwright: Lanford Wilson. At: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted. Phone: 312-335-1650; $20-$50. Runs through: May 29
"Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home" runs the Stephen Foster song, and therein lies the paradox intrinsic to every urban renewal project. One person's "run-down" is another's "lived-in". An object of "faded grandeur" in one estimation may translate to "moldy old eyesore" elsewhere. And when a property is slated for "improvement", this pronouncement too often pertains to its inhabitants as well.
The Hot-L Baltimoreits neon "e" burned out, never to be repairedis such a property. Once a luxury inn for travelers on the busy East-Coast railways, Memorial Day weekend in 1973 finds it scheduled for demolitiona crisis greeted by the assorted retirees, prostitutes, petty criminals and vagabonds who comprise its current residents with a mix of dismay and resignation. Ironically, the tenant most distressed is the youngesta 19-year-old call girl enamored of transience, but eager to share what wisdom she can with strangers willing to swap a few moments of intimacy.
The late Lanford Wilson envisioned his play in choral terms, identifying characters by their vocal ranges in addition to physical appearance. This complies perfectly with the ensemble-based aesthetic that is Steppenwolf Theatre and director Tina Landau's stock-in-trade. The resulting stage picture swarms with activity, little pockets of dramatic action transpiring side-by-side on James Schuette's two-story replica of a spacious lobby whose sweeping staircase leads to upstairs rooms also on full view. The dialogue, too, swirls in counterpoint as giddily polyphonic as a Handel oratorio, overlapping as only possible in live theater, to paint a portrait of a community about to be replaced by the insular anonymity that defined "progress" four decades ago.
Wilson's purpose wasn't a dirge for the downtrodden, however, but a hymn to the quintessentially American optimism that spurs its citizens on expeditions filled with hope and fraught with riska farm (in an alkaline desert), a private room (in a brothel), a quest (for an apocryphal ancestor). "Nobody's got the conviction to act on their passions," laments the waif who refuses ownership of even a name, but our final image of the Baltimore hotel is of a seen-it-all tart, an abandoned teenage boy and a soon-to-be-jobless desk clerk dancing defiantly to the radio's music. "The bulldozers are barking at the door! They're gonna tear up the dance floor in a minute!" roars the intrepid April, "Turn it up! The important thing is to move!" It is in 2011, as well.