In 'The Grift,' cast and audience are thick as thieves

Ten people stand around a padlocked box, trying to figure out how to open it with an odd assortment of clues — a beret, a plastic camel, an apple.

It’s one of several trials confronting the audience in the site-specific play “The Grift,” running through April 3 in and around Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. Writer-director Tom Salamon describes the show as part theater, part escape room, with the audience called on to solve puzzles, decipher emoji maps, even identify songs. They use that information to learn the fine art of the con — scams like Pig in the Poke and Round-the-Corner — as they try to bring down the master criminal whose misdeeds are at the heart of the story, explains Salamon, who moved to Montauk from Manhattan when the pandemic hit.

The show, a follow-up to Salamon’s successful “Accomplice” series,” was first produced in 2015 by La Jolla Playhouse in California, which was interested in his unusual brand of immersive theater. The idea, he says, is to drop people in interesting locations “like they are in the middle of a movie.” You might learn some history, he says, but more important ‘‘are the weird people you meet on the way, people who might help you decode a message or maybe buy you a drink.”

Immersive theater is a craze now, says Salamon, but in 2015 it stood out, offering him opportunities to open productions in Los Angeles and London. Bringing it closer to home was a no-brainer, he says, adding that a number of locations in Sag Harbor allowed the use of their spaces. Some are purposely being kept under wraps (along with a cameo by one well-known actor), but the rooftop bar of the new Sag Harbor Cinema is on the list. Audiences get in a lot of steps (6,000 at a recent preview), but there’s no more than two minutes walking between locations and the action is all inside.

A SAG HARBOR STORY

Salamon has updated the story, noting that it’s important for the show to feel organic to its location. “There’s some legitimate history of Sag Harbor in the show,” he says, and some “very inventive history. But it is a story that clearly takes place in this town.”

That’s one of the things that intrigued Bay Street’s executive director Tracy Mitchell. Although the show was postponed a week after Salamon got COVID while in Scotland, Mitchell believes this is a perfect production to get people back to the theater. “We’re limiting each audience to 50,” she explains, with each divided into groups of 10 to hit the various locations before ending up at Bay Street. And of course, she says, “everyone loves a good con story.”

True, concurs Salamon, pointing to two current con-centric Netflix hits (“Inventing Anna” and “The Tinder Swindler”), though his favorite remains the 1973 film “Paper Moon,” which won an Oscar for a young Tatum O’Neal. “We’re fascinated,” he says, “because these are charming people able to pull these things off. They are able to convince people they should be trusted … very charismatic people who are thieves.”

PERFECT CASTING

Was it hard to find actors with those attributes? “No,” says Salamon, “because that’s not what I was looking for.” Though the seven actors must be masters of improv, he says the twist on this story is that they are not portraying criminal con artists. “You’re being taught by people who don’t really understand it,” he says, “and you’re all going to figure it out together.”

The production is carefully orchestrated to allow audiences to control their involvement, says Salamon.  “Some people are going to really dive in and participate,” he says, while “others are more comfortable taking a back seat.”  And what about the lessons learned?  Once the show is over, deadpans Salamon, “we take no responsibility for how people put these new skills to use.”