Groovy & MySQL: ALTER TABLE

I was having trouble executing a query similar to the following with in Groovy against a MySQL database:

    ALTER TABLE MAP AUT0_INCREMENT = 109

The code:

    import groovy.sql.Sql
    ...
    def setAutoIncrement(table, value) {
        def sql = Sql.newInstance(jdbcUrl, jdbcUsername, jdbcPassword, jdbcDriver)
        def query = "ALTER TABLE $table AUTO_INCREMENT = $value"
        sql.execute(query)
    }

I was getting the folowing error:

    com.mysql.jdbc.exceptions.MySQLSyntaxErrorException:
    You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual
    that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right
    syntax to use near ''MAP' AUTO_INCREMENT = '109'' at line 1

Seems like Groovy was adding single quotes around the table name and the value. I resolved this by strong-typing the query variable to a String to subvert the GString interpolation:

   String query = "ALTER TABLE $table AUTO_INCREMENT = $value"

Quoting the table and value in MySQL is invalid when running the MySQL command-line tool as well.