David Mamet originally wrote The Water Engine in 1977 as a radio drama, and that’s how the Asolo Conservatory actors start out playing it. But the presentational style becomes a backdrop for downstage representational acting of the story. Here, the mix makes for progress that echoes the time and setting: Chicago, 1934, at the height of the Century of Progress Fair. It touted science and industry as the ways out of recession, leading to everyone’s getting work and achieving the American Dream.
Charles Lang (Josh James, wonderfully attuned to restraint earlier, anguish later), a worker in a laboratory, has invented on his own an engine that runs on water. To get a patent, he seeks help from lawyer Morton Gross (despite his symbolic name, played with nuance by Chris Alexey Diaz). After Gross sees Lang’s invention work, he not only gets greedy but introduces a pure force of evil. He’s Lawrence Oberman (fine Jordan Sobel), representing society’s nihilists of progress in favor of profit. Both Lang and his brave, encouraging, but vulnerable blind sister (compelling Lisa Woods), get pursued for Lang’s invention’s plans. A friendship with Mr. Wallace, a deli owner, and his son Bernie (supportive Mark Comer and Tom Harney), enables Lang to avoid a complete takeover of his invention, despite denial of his ownership and destruction of his model by the evildoers. Mamet thus allows a possibility of hope for the future when young Bernie receives mail sent by Lang.
Supplying a leitmotif of irrational predictions about the future is a woman (intriguing Kelsey Petersen) who often broadcasts a commercial urging compliance with keeping up a chain letter. A dollar sent to do so is predicted to bring riches, but breaking the chain will cause death. (Examples of the latter bring present chills.)
Also popping up from time to time to warn and provoke workers is a soapbox orator. Of course, his listeners aren’t much of a crowd and they’re gathered at Bughouse Square. (It’s a free speech area like London’s Hyde Park but more given to radicals and crazies in contrast to the adjoining humanities library. It’s one of many of Mamet’s clever satirical use of Chicago sites, culminating in the finding of murder victims in a zoo.)
Kevin Barber as a reporter for The Daily News (politically neutral, unlike Chicago’s other and better-known major paper) doesn’t follow through on investigating Lang’s claims. He represents journalists, often skeptical, who fall short of their function.
Scott Kuiper and Jacob Sherburne supply sound effects in accurate old-fashioned ways that work crisply with the two production styles.
Director Greg Leaming meets the demands of Mamet’s script by laudably absorbing in performance its conflicts and contradictions. He gets acting from his student actors that never falls short of professional quality.
