Last Monday was date night for Renée Elise Goldsberry and her husband, Alexis Johnson, a lawyer. Along for the ride were three couples, neighbors from Harlem.
"We're friends through our kids," said Ms. Goldsberry, 44, who plays the piercingly intelligent Angelica Schuyler in the hit Broadway musical "Hamilton." "We all have children, and tonight we all have babysitters."
The eight had originally planned to simply eat out, "but I wanted to do more than that," said Ms. Goldsberry, perhaps best known to audiences for her recurring role as Geneva Pine, a tough-minded assistant district attorney on CBS's "The Good Wife," and for her tour of duty as Evangeline Williamson on the ABC soap opera "One Life to Live."
Now, it's all "Hamilton," all the time. She won Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk awards for her performance in the show. If they handed out prizes for best posture, best smile and most gracious, well, she'd take those trophies, too.
Ms. Goldsberry's manager suggested "Escape the Room," an interactive beat-the-clock puzzle game with two locations in New York. Participants are locked in a carefully appointed space, then given an hour to find and parse clues that will set them free. It was the perfect sort of evening for Ms. Goldsberry. "You know what I am: I'm extremely competitive," she said.
"To quote Ron Chernow's book, Angelica Schuyler was as comfortable in an English drawing room as in a parlor on the Hudson River," she said, referring to the Alexander Hamilton biography that inspired the musical. "She was very cross-continental. I wanted to do something that would have challenged her. I think she would have played a game that was similar to 'Escape the Room' to entertain herself and keep her mind sharp."
As for Ms. Goldsberry's mind, it's an outlier in a family of left brains. "Everyone's a scientist or an engineer," she said. "And I'm the actress."
Just before 9:30, the actress, who was wearing black pants, a black sleeveless top and large silver hoop earrings, settled with her friends in the reception room of the "Escape" outpost on West 31st Street near Fifth Avenue, where a self-described clue master named Josh laid out the rules of engagement.
"You guys are playing 'Escape the Agency,' " he said. "Your mission is to complete three tasks: get a positive facial ID on the agent, track his or her whereabouts and retrieve the attaché case that was stolen."
As her group headed inside a room outfitted with, among other furnishings, a table and library card file drawers, Ms. Goldsberry said: "I love spending time with my friends. It's my favorite thing in the world."
The door was locked, and the group began puzzling over a table set with a poker hand. They opened books, cupboards and drawers, sometimes hitting pay dirt, but just as often coming up empty or uncertain about the significance of discoveries like a flashlight and a flash drive. Ms. Goldsberry thought it might be worth checking the top of a cupboard. Her husband gallantly offered his knee as a perch.
"Anything up there?" asked their friend Tennille Tatum-Evans, a lawyer.
"Umm, there's a dust bunny."
Ms. Goldsberry grew up in Houston and suburban Detroit. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon, she briefly considered moving to Chicago but ultimately chose Los Angeles, where she was cast in "One Life" and "Ally McBeal."
About a decade ago, she moved to New York when she was cast as Nala in "The Lion King." Roles in "Rent" and "The Color Purple" followed.
For audiences, "Hamilton" has been a history lesson. For Ms. Goldsberry, it's been a lesson, as if she needed it, about being part of an ensemble. "That's the kind of teamwork we have to have here," she said of "Escape the Room." "We won't get out of here if everyone doesn't step up at a certain point and connect some clues."
A cipher, a riddle, a map, a keypad and other obstacles stood between the amateur agents and the exit. With exactly one minute to go, the group figured out the number combination that let them unlock the door. Ms. Goldsberry, who has lots of experience making an entrance, also knows how to make an exit: with an exultant whoop and well-toned arms raised in triumph.
"I think this would be fun to do with my Schuyler sisters," she said.
But there was a more immediate puzzle for Ms. Goldsberry and her friends as they crowded into the elevator and headed back downstairs: where to go for a drink.
"Hey," she said. "Do you realize we were here the whole evening and we didn't talk about our kids once?"
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