The Stanislaw Witkiewicz play will run at the HSA Theater at 645 St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem. Both CTH artistic director, Alfred Preisser, and producing director, Christopher McElroen will be involved. Preisser will star with Leopold Lowe, and McElroen will direct. The locomotive of the title is not figurative. The play sets a real choo choo on stage which, hijacked by "super villains," runs along at a furious clip. Among the characters along for the ride are duchesses, policemen, gangsters, painters, psychiatrists and engineers, who "wander in and out, kill one another, and carry on philosophical conversations."
Witkiewicz—a Polish playwright, painter and novelist who served in the Russian army during the Revolution of 1917—wrote the work in 1923. Many of his plays were not published or performed during his lifetime, which ended in 1939. In the '50s, however, he emerged as an influential writer. His plays, which include They and The Beelzebub Sonata, typically tell of an apocalyptic future.
Tickets are $19. Call (212) 206-1515.