Dan Allison
September 13, 2015 9:2 pm
The Engine of Our Ruin at CapStage
Tuesday evening I attended The Engine of Our Ruin at CapStage. Part of the Playwrights' Revolution readings. The play was absurdist, and quite funny, though a few parts dragged. Jonathan Williams, the departing artistic director, thought farcical was a better word, but I think absurdist. Jonathan and Peter Mohrmann, anger of the founders, was also it it. The play is by Jason Wells, the playwright of The North Plan, which I remember being absurd and funny, though I can't recall any details.
The audience was much more like the typical Big Idea Theatre, with most being actors or friends of actors. The after party was loaded with theatre talk and intrigue.
"In a luxury hotel suite somewhere in the Middle East, diplomat Charles Manning-Jourdain meets with delegates of an unfriendly nation in the hope that a simple trade agreement will bring their two countries closer together. But this routine mission quickly becomes an international incident thanks to an idealistic interpreter with an agenda of her own; a belligerent official who brings a rumor of war; and Charles’ own staffers, whose attempts to cover up an after-hours party might just topple a foreign government. Jason Wells also wrote THE NORTH PLAN which was produced at CapStage in 2013."