‘Tru$t Me’ Cashes In on Real-Life Case of Greed

Everyone dreams about making a killing someday--a windfall, a bonanza, the pot at the end of the rainbow. For most of us, it’s only a daydream that manifests itself in a Saturday night poker game, football pools, or putting a buck or two on the lottery.

But take the case of two Greek American brothers who own a restaurant that’s not doing well. They take out a loan from their Mafia partners. Then they go into a vending-machine business, also with the Mafia. That doesn’t pay off either. Now the mob wants its money.

Everyman’s financial daydream turns desperate for the brothers. But wait a minute. One of their other partners in the vending-machine business is a local celebrity, the announcer for the daily lottery drawings. And there’s the lottery official who might be convinced to help. What if . . .?

It sounds like fiction, but it’s a true story about a lottery scam that could have worked if greed hadn’t taken hold of the participants. And, based on a New York Times news story, playwright Bill Van Daalen turned it into his drama, “Tru$t Me,” opening Friday in its world premiere staging at North Hollywood’s Jewel Box Theatre.

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Of course, Van Daalen has changed the locale and some of the details to protect the guilty. The details of the scam are all there though, including the injection of paint into most of the numbered pingpong balls so they can’t be sucked up the tube to be read as winning numbers. Only the empty balls will rise to the occasion.

The scam itself was not Van Daalen’s driving motivation in writing the play. It was the chutzpah of the men involved that piqued his interest.

“They were looking for a way to Easy Street,” Van Daalen says. “They had gotten into a bind where they owed big bills to the Mafia. You don’t do that; it’s a very bad idea. If you ever sign a contract with the Mafia, you’re dead.”

It was the naivete and daring of the plan that attracted Van Daalen as a writer.

“I use a phrase several times in the play--’I’m going to give it a shot.’ They take a chance. They go way over the moral line, of course, but they’re willing to take that existential moment, and just stand outside conventional society. That’s what the public enjoys about criminals. They live outside of society and are willing to defy conventional mores,” he explained

One aspect of the tale that appealed to Van Daalen is the story’s social setting, in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, a period when America was at a crossroads of sorts. It was the day of the Arab oil embargo, the long lines at gas stations, when the Iranians took hostages at an American embassy. As Van Daalen remembers, Ted Koppel called it “America-as-hostage.”

“We really had the feeling,” Van Daalen recalls, “that America was going downhill, that there was something really wrong. There was a recession, and people were losing their jobs. It was a very unstable time, and it was frightening. It had never happened before. People felt really unsettled and uncomfortable about our situation in the world.”

Things haven’t changed in our world since then, except to get darker, and that’s why Van Daalen thinks the story is as meaningful today as it was a decade and a half ago. He believes there is a balance, a scale, that keeps most people from stepping outside society as his characters have done, but he also feels there’s a catharsis, a final straw, that drives some to cross the line.

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Actor John Tayloe, who plays Jim Hester, the announcer who joins the scam, is fascinated by Hester’s very ordinariness. The real announcer was a choirmaster at a local church. He had emceed the local “Bowling for Dollars” TV show for years and was a real working-class hero. Like the others, Hester got swept up in the scheme by greed.

“Jim Hester,” Tayloe says, “has been given some very important underlying reasons for making the decision to try and pull this thing off. He has money problems, too, the IRS and investments going down the drain.”

With a laugh, Tayloe adds, “It’s typecasting. And he has a young, attractive girlfriend who wants to be a country and western singer. That’s part of his motivation. He’s afraid he’s going to lose her. He’s a gambler, a guy who has two ex-wives, which I happen to have. More typecasting. And he likes young women. Again typecasting. Seriously, it makes the role very challenging.”

In addition to his own character’s subtext, Tayloe finds the same imperative message for today’s audiences in the play’s subtext.

“How many people today,” Tayloe asks, “if they knew they could get away with fixing the lottery, would turn down the chance? I wouldn’t guess the percentage, but I’ll bet it’s a big bite.”

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Tru$t Me.”

* WHERE: Jewel Box Theatre, 10426 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood.

* WHEN: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends May 19.

* HOW MUCH: $15.

* CALL: (213) 936-1594.