There are reasons that actors love David Mamet, and virtually every one of them is on display in the inventive and exciting television adaptation of Mamet`s 1977 play ”The Water Engine.”
This production, airing at 7 p.m. Monday on Turner Network Television, is the first in the network`s ambitious ”Screenworks” series.
It is a collaborative venture among TNT, Steven Spielberg and Michael Brandman Productions that would adapt the works of authors into films using a repertory company of actors, directors and production professionals.
With three other works in waiting, the series could not get off to a better, more solid start.
Even within certain budgetary constraints, Mamet`s play-originally written for radio but first performed on stage at the bygone St. Nicholas Theatre-has been transformed into a movie that takes on big issues with a dramatic flair and a surprising amount of action.
It`s a dark thriller, with a cast that includes such longtime Mamet collaborators as W.H. Macy, Joe Mantegna, John Mahoney, Patti LuPone and Mike Nussbaum; Mamet`s wife, Rebecca Pidgeon; Treat Williams and Charles Durning;
and even the playwright himself, in a short, snappy back-of-a-bus cameo with actor pal J.J. Johnston.
They all mix marvelously in an allegorically heavy tale of idealism dashed by big business. It`s the story of how the system corrupts the American Dream of an engineer (Macy) who has invented the revolutionary machine of the title and who sees its eventual manufacture as a way to relieve the poverty in which he lives with his blind sister (LuPone).
Set in Chicago at the time of the 1933-34 World`s Fair, the play has any number of shadowy subtexts: a strange chain letter that is working its way through the city, snatches of sinister conversation. There`s a gritty feel to the action, the settings and some of the characters.
Playing his part with a desperate eagerness, Macy tries to market his machine, first by approaching a patent attorney (Mahoney) who is disbelieving until seeing a demonstration. Another attorney (Mantegna) soon enters the business, speaking with a menacing Germanic accent and trying to buy the rights to the machine or, failing that, get them any way he can.
The film turns into a chase, as Macy tries to get his information to a newspaper columnist (Williams), while he and his sister are hounded by goons. Adapted by Mamet, the movie contains the same sort of clipped, repetitious dialogue for which the author is famous and honored-and which actors obviously appreciate. Not always true to the rhythms of normal speech, Mamet`s words are emphatic in the extreme, almost like poetry. The actors deliver their lines with obvious delight.
Director Steven Schacter, a longtime Mamet pal who directed the original stage production of the play, has wrapped the play in a tense and sinister blanket. Original on every level, ”The Water Engine” is a dark delight.
