STAGE REVIEWS : Saddleback’s ‘Hot l’ Takes While to Pick Up Steam : After it gets rolling, the play becomes an engaging presentation about a lodging that will soon face the wrecking ball. But the continuous action minimizes any sense of resolvable plot.

The “Hot l Baltimore” at Saddleback College gets rolling as a hotel desk clerk makes wake-up calls. It’s an appropriate way to begin this slow-starting play. Like someone who doesn’t function until he’s had that first cup of coffee, this play takes awhile to pick up steam, but it becomes engaging nonetheless.

Director Lynn Wells provides a deft production touch: There is no formal beginning or end to Acts I or II, just as there is no curtain. As the audience files in, hotel employees and guests are already going about their business on stage.

But is it business as usual? Besides conveying the 24-hour-a-day hustle and bustle of a hotel, this continuous action also serves to minimize any sense of resolvable plot.

In Lanford Wilson’s play, the Hotel Baltimore has an appointment with the wrecking ball, presumably a victim of urban renewal. The decline of the city center has caused this previously posh hotel and its denizens to fall into physical, if not emotional, desuetude.

The play, with no dramatic center to revolve around, uses the fringe elements of society--hookers, crazies and, unfortunately, the elderly--to fill the void, as they often do in the real world. It presents a slice of life in which the only two constants are the impending demolition and the fact that people will continue to flow, albeit temporarily, through the revolving door like sand through an hourglass. The guests look ahead to the future or back to the past--anywhere but the muddled present.

One is left wondering what is in store for these characters.

What will happen to that yuppie-looking desk clerk (Derric Michael Neal), the old woman who waxes nostalgic about gentler times (Char Salkin), the feisty old man (George Boyer), the street-tough (Danette Haddad) and her slow-witted brother (Scott Mendelson). And what will become of that sassy, pink-clad hooker (Julie Ann Johnson) when she enters that taxi? We can only guess.

This colorful and sad play drags at times--especially at the beginning--because everything seems inconsequential. It has a numbing, soap-opera quality: Not because of any particular casting or production shortcoming, but because by now, even in affluent Orange County, the sight of urban decay is all too familiar.

‘HOT L BALTIMORE’

A Saddleback College Theater Arts Department production. Directed by Lynn Wells. With Derric Michael Neal, Amy Young, Char Salkin, Bonnie L. Vigil, Casandra Crosland, George Boyer, Danette Haddad, Scott Mendelson, Joseph Bass, Julie Ann Johnson, Rick Johnson, Michael Donges, Linda Yeazel, Tim Mulvhill, Vidal Perez, Randall Dodge, Chris Tatum, Kirsty Payne, Erin Pipes, Niloofar Tavangar. Plays Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m. At the McKinney Theater, Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo. Tickets: $5 to $7. Information: (714) 582-4656, weekdays between noon and 4 p.m. and one hour before performances.