{"id":248371,"date":"2015-02-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sdnews.com\/vintage-immersion-at-lafayette-hotel\/"},"modified":"2015-02-27T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T08:00:00","slug":"vintage-immersion-at-lafayette-hotel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/vintage-immersion-at-lafayette-hotel\/","title":{"rendered":"Vintage immersion at Lafayette Hotel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Por Charlene Baldridge<\/p>\n

Little Ben is the love child of Lana Turner and Bob Hope, conceived at the Lafayette Hotel in the days when both film stars had reputations to lose. So Little Ben was hidden from public view, his mother having given birth to him in one of the hotel suites. He never saw her again. The boy lived all his life at the Lafayette.<\/p>\n

If you believe that one, playwright\/director Tom Salamon, whose \u201cThe Grift<\/a>\u201d is playing at the hotel through March 22 as part of La Jolla Playhouse\u2019s WoW (Without Walls) Festival, will tell you another. Old hotels have legendary stories and this one, perhaps based in fact, is a doozy. Think of Eloise.<\/p>\n

\"grift1webtop\"<\/a>
Audience participants in La Jolla Playhouse\u2019s Without Walls presentation of \u201cThe Grift\u201d at the Lafayette Hotel. (Photo by Jim Carmody)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Filmed on his deathbed, Old Ben (Jim Chovick) charges the color-coded teams of audience members, each equipped with its own set of casks that contain clues, to learn cons that allow them to catch and bring to his knees a notorious grifter who bilked Ben\u2019s caretaker\u2019s grandmother out of her fortune. His name is Killer Joe (Bernard H. Kopso), and his downfall is effected through a series of cons, which we learn while meandering all over the vintage hotel, from a cabana off its famous swimming pool, to the life-sized chessboard, to the room in which Ben was raised by a series of nannies, lifeguards, bellhops and bartenders, and to the hotel restaurant for refreshments. No wonder the kid himself grew up to be a latter day grifter.<\/p>\n

\"Dana<\/a>
Dana Lau as \u201cThe Nanny\u2019s Great-Granddaughter\u201d with audience participants. (Photo by Jim Carmody)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Audience members are cautioned to wear comfortable shoes and bring their brain cells. The fortunate, as this writer was, will have team members who prove to be fleet of foot, acute of axons and dendrites, and un-cowed by being part of the action. (There is plenty of room for those who are cowed to hang back.) The smoothly timed arrivals and departures are the essence of immersive discoveries and disclosures. For the final con, an art auction with a switcheroo, we wind up once again in the ballroom.<\/p>\n

Other acting company members and con teachers are Matt Thompson as the narrator, Yvette Angulo as the chambermaid\u2019s daughter, Lucas Coleman as the bartender\u2019s grandson, Dana Lau as the nanny\u2019s great-granddaughter, Scott Nickley as the lifeguard\u2019s grandson (my favorite scene) and Cris O\u2019Bryon as the bellhop\u2019s grandson. By the end of the two-hour traipse, one feels like booking a room and falling into the hotel\u2019s glorious swimming pool.<\/p>\n

\"<\/a>
\u201cThe Lifeguard\u2019s Grandson\u201d with audience participants (Photo by Jim Carmody)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The feeling of wanting to jump in must be attributed to writer\/director Salamon, who is a specialist in developing immersive entertainment. Pun intended.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>All praise to producing partner Diabolical Muse, and to the Playhouse design team, Laura Zingle, Amy Chini, Jennifer Brawn Gittings, Sergio Lopez, Michael Latimer, Jacob Bruce, Lisa Chan-Wylie, Sarah Wheeler, Sofia Zaragoza and Marie Shelton.<\/p>\n

In case you\u2019re wondering, the Red Fox Steakhouse and Piano Bar, connected to the Lafayette Hotel, is alive and well in all its retro wonder.<\/p>\n

\u2014Contact Charlene Baldridge at <\/em>charb81@cox.net<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Por Charlene Baldridge<\/p>","protected":false},"author":731,"featured_media":248372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11555","_seopress_titles_title":"Vintage immersion at Lafayette Hotel","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11549,11551,11550,11555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-entertainment","category-news","category-top-stories","category-uptown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/731"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}