David Mamet's disappointing comedy "The Water Engine" … is a sendup of radio drama in the thirties and at the same time an attempt to recapture the spirit and mood of the period…. Mr. Mamet has supplied any number of shrewd atmospheric touches to the broadcast: a sound-effects man works busily in a booth upstage left, the actors casually double and triple their roles, and there are commercial breaks and organ "stings." And the broadcast episode itself is carefully set in its time and place….

Yet Mr. Mamet's play is a synthetic that doesn't work. Its ponderous irony … and its foolishness are poor substitutes for his usual original humor or his usual subtle tension. Or, indeed, for authenticity. These radio actors pantomime stage business and play to one another; real radio actors play only to the microphone, and they rarely raise their eyes from the script or change their...