Mr. Happiness and The Water Engine at The Old Vic Tunnels

Mr. Happiness and The Water Engine at The Old Vic Tunnels

15 June, 2011
by: Naima Khan

Naima Khan reviews Theatre6's hit and miss double bill of Mamet radio plays. 

Mr Happiness

In Theatre6's stage adaptation of David Mamet's radio play Mr Happiness, David Burt plays the knowing radio host cum agony uncle whose timing and affection for his audience is hilarious. Mamet roots Mr Happiness in traditional values but gives him a refreshing pragmatism and rationality illuminated by Burt's wise tone and frank advice. His character is modest and asserts that much of what he's saying is just common sense – though it's not always practical – and Happiness' sense of purpose makes it so much the funnier.

Beneath his “my dear listeners” tone, there's a late-night brandy-drinking man who spends his nights alone in a dark radio station. The Old Vic Tunnels are a surprisingly good setting for this and as life rumbles around him, Happiness remains in his own world with his lonely, lost listeners.

David Burt is simply superb in this role. His character spends the whole play, short though it is, sat at a desk, but Burt's voice and tiny gestures are subtly brilliant. From glancing over his letters to glaring over his glasses at us, he makes this radio play completely suited to the stage.

The only thing hampering this production are the unnecessary silhouettes of the characters that write to Mr Happiness: they're distracting and don't add anything to the play. But Burt more than makes up for them.



The Water Engine

Another of Mamet's radio plays runs alongside Mr Happiness in a double bill, but The Water Engine is far less suited to the stage. It's not one of Mamet's best works but is packed with melodramatic dialogue that tells the moralistic tale of Charles Lang, a man who invents something priceless only to have it stolen from him. The lawyers Lang wants to patent his engine try to steal it, kidnapping his sister in the process, but the melodrama isn't handled well. We're not navigated through any twists and turns, and the staging sadly just doesn't work.

In this version, there are a lot of different settings – something that calls for an adaptable stage, but the design and the costumes here are far too rigid. The characters have a tough time establishing the different locations and the staging doesn't allow them to communicate easily with each other. Often they sit facing the audience when it seems logical that they'd be facing one another as they talk.

And as you'd expect from a radio play, there's a lot of dialogue. So much so that it'd take a very clever adaptation to make it work on stage, but this production falls short. The characters talk frenetically without doing very much and I feel like I'd much rather be listening to the text. On stage, everything is far too busy and confused with some elements, like the live music, shoe-horned in without much of an effect.

So while Mr. Happiness is definitely worth seeing, The Water Engine isn't really, which puts theatregoers in a bit of conundrum as the interval comes half way through the latter.


The Mamet double bill runs at The Old Vic Tunnels until 9th July



Images: Veronika Lukasova

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Naima Khan