The best thing about going to a play is going with a friend who can observe things I miss (and wish I hadn’t missed since I’m playing the role of theatre critic).

While I was busy jotting down notes in my journal about one particular scene in act one, my friend Colette saw for a brief second what was behind the pink towel of Suzy, (Kate Arrington) one of the tenants of a run-down hotel in “The Hot L Baltimore,” which opened at Steppenwolf on March 24th. “I saw everything,” Colette said.

Written by Lanford Wilson (who died the same day of the Steppenwolf premiere at age 74) and originally premiered in 1973, “The Hot L Baltimore” is a letter to the decline of a great American tribute: the urban metropolis. The missing “e” in the title’s “hotel” represents all that is lost and broken in the city of Baltimore, including the characters that occupy the once-glamorous hotel.

A host of characters interact with one another over the course of a day and night in the lobby of “The Hot L Baltimore.” The play opens with Bill Lewis (Jon Michael Hill) performing wakeup calls to various tenants. Martha, who refuses to be acknowledge her given name, (portrayed by DePaul’s very own Allison Torem, billed as “The Girl”) keeps pestering Bill on everything from the phone lines to the train schedules that she has memorized. I was under the impression that her character was no older than 14. I thought she was an over-energetic kid who was either an orphan or living with a relative and had nothing better to do at seven in the morning than annoy Bill at the front desk. By the second act, I found out that she is a 19-year-old prostitute who would rather talk about trains than deal tricks and has traveled to all 50 states, “some of them three times!”

Bill and Mr. Katz (James Vincent Meredith) have to notify the tenants that the hotel has been condemned and they must vacate the building within a month’s time. This leads Suzy to protest. Not many people are willing to join the fight. Old Mr. Morse (Yasen Peyankov) believes that the hotel would be better off demolished, but he’s probably just bitter about his window being stuck and the lack of hot water available.

The play lacks a substantial plot but it makes up for that with its rich collection of characters, often times overwhelming when all of them occupy the lobby simultaneously. There are a couple of scenes where you have dual dialogues occurring. Among my favorite characters were “The Girl,” (Torem) and Millie, (Molly Regan) an elderly woman from Louisiana who enjoyed talking to whoever would listen to her. Millie has a single light focused on her in two segments where talks about Baltimore during its golden era and her beloved aunt back in Louisiana.

One thing you can always expect at Steppenwolf is the impressive sets for each play. “The Hot L Baltimore” has two levels of fully functioning rooms. The TV sets are working and playing programming from the 1970s, including the Corn Flakes commercials, the promos for ABC’s “Special Entertainment” broadcasts and a televised speech from President Nixon. The set reminded me of a 70’s sitcom. It felt like I had stepped into TV Land.

Unlike the sitcoms on TV Land, there is some heavy substance in “The Hot L Baltimore.” (Fun fact: Norman Lear, the creator of TV’s “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons,” was behind a 1975 TV series based on this play. It lasted only 13 episodes.) The tenants know that an era is coming to an end when their beloved home meets the wrecking ball. Like the country at the time, they are either uncertain about their future and how to fix their current state of despair or they have developed a quick-fix scheme to their problems that will fall apart and lead them back to square one.

But they’ll be damned if they don’t try something.

“The Hot L Baltimore” will run at Steppenwolf Theatre until May 29th. Student ticket discounts are available online.