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In the face of discouraging trends in Seattle’s small theatres, the Strawberry Theatre Workshop is motoring through its third season, offering David Mamet’s The Water Engine at Richard Hugo House, March 22 through April 21, 2007. The final piece of Strawshop’s “Troubled Water” series (with The Bridge of San Luis Rey and An Enemy of the People), The Water Engine moves seamlessly between a 1930s radio drama and a traditional, realistic play. It is one of Mamet’s formative works and serves as a highly theatrical parable on American capitalism.
Strawshop is riding a wave of critical acclaim and market growth while persevering in their commitment to pay professional artists for their work. An Enemy of the People oversold it’s final two weeks in the 89-seat Hugo House Theatre in March, breaking company attendance records set only a season ago by Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist.
This success is validation of Artistic Director’s Greg Carter’s dedication to confronting audiences with relevant political questions on the stage. The Mamet play continues a chain of activist writers from Strawshop’s short history: Charles Dickens, Woody Guthrie, Henrik Ibsen, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, John Lennon, and Dario Fo.
Carter wants The Water Engine to continue that run of popularity: “Our only regret after Enemy was that we turned people away in the last week; we need to encourage audiences to seek out our work during our first weekend, when we often have dozens of empty seats.” To that end, Strawshop has taken the radical step of cutting opening weekend ticket prices in half to just $10. As has become a tradition for the theatre, the first Friday performance (March 23) will include a wine and dessert reception and a talk-back session with the artists.
A Pulitzer Prize winning playwright (Glengarry Glen Ross, 1984), David Mamet first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays between 1972-75, including The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. The Water Engine was originally written as a short story during this same period, which Mamet revisited when commissioned by a producer of drama for public radio in 1976. He wrote in a book of essays (Writing in Restaurants, 1987) that his experience with story-telling in this unique form was instrumental in his development of a dramatic voice.
When given the opportunity to present The Water Engine on stage, the author gives the director wide latitude in using the convention of microphones and studio effects or playing scenes with realistic movement. Mamet said of the original staged production, “The result was a third reality, a scenic truth, which dealt with radio not as an electronic convenience, but as an expression of our need to communicate and explain.”
The Strawshop production will be energetic, played without an intermission in just over an hour. Authentic Foley sound effects accompany eight actors as they bring more than twenty characters to life.
The Water Engine is a reunion of sorts for the ensemble that created Strawshop’s incredibly popular Accidental Death of an Anarchist in 2005. Six of the Anarchist artists return, including MJ Sieber, who played the corrupt Superintendent, and now directs. For The Water Engine, Sieber (who also recently appeared in Native Son at Intiman, and Sleeping Beauty at Seattle Children’s Theatre) reverses roles with Anarchist director Gabriel Baron, who now takes the stage in the role of inventor Charles Lang. Baron was named the 2005 Theatre Genius by the Stranger shortly after Anarchist opened, and is familiar to audiences at Seattle Rep (The Chosen and Restoration) and SCT (Honus and Me).
Other Anarchist alumni include Michael Patten (Heartbreak House at Intiman, Noises Off at Seattle Rep) and David Goldstein (Comedy of Errors at Seattle Shakespeare, Hamlet at Wooden O). Lighting Designer Eldon Tam and Scenic Designer Greg Carter are also on board.
As always, the Strawshop cast brings a level of professionalism not common on Capitol Hill. The rest of the eight-person ensemble includes Wooden O Artistic Director George Mount (Hamlet and Comedy of Errors), Flaming Box of Stuff frontman Dusty Warren (familiar from both Sketchfest and his one-man sketch comedy show, All American Push Up Party), Marty Mukhalian (Fellow Passengers and This Land at Strawshop), Kate Czajkowski (Louis Slotin Sonata at Empty Space, Proof at Tacoma Actor’s Guild), and Erik Hill (Crescendo Falls and God-Damned Tom at Theater Schmeater).
The ambitious and imaginative Sound Design is by Luke Kehrwald |
