By Jeffrey Sweet
Not only has the play that won the 2007 Joseph Jefferson Award for best play in Chicago, August: Osage County, received the best reviews of the season for a new play in New York, but the winner of the Jeff for best musical, Adding Machine, has just opened off-Broadway to the best reviews of the season for a new musical. At the moment, at least, the best new work in Manhattan is not from Manhattan but a city where the weather is notorious nearly a thousand miles to the west.
By an odd coincidence, the play this musical is based on, Elmer Rice’s 1923 expressionistic drama The Adding Machine (and no, I have no idea why “The” was dropped for the musical’s title) will be broadcast on BBC Radio Three’s series Drama on Three on March 3 and will be available online for the following week. For years it has existed in the States mostly as an anthology-stuffer – one of those plays of sufficient significance that a case could be made for assigning drama students to read it but rarely receives a professional production of consequence. Its leading character, subtly named Mr. Zero, is a drudge who makes his living adding up numbers in some nameless and dimly-lit office. With the invention of the adding machine, his job is obliterated. The bad news hits him when, in fact, he is expecting a promotion. Unhinged, he murders his boss, spends time on death row, is executed, wakes up in Elysian Fields, finds an adding machine in the afterlife that excites his passion for crunching numbers, and is re-born to become a wage slave yet again.
Tempted to sing yet?
What struck me on the page as earnest, somewhat heavy-handed satire is transformed in this musicalization into a thing of oddly moving beauty. Major credit must go to the score by Joshua Schmidt and Jason Loewith which mostly eschews traditional song forms in favor of arias and musical scenes that would be at home specializing in chamber operas. Angular melodic lines are supported by accompaniment of surprising lyricism. The richness of the score is in contrast to the nearly monochromatic set designs depicting a world of punishing drabness lit to a level that barely achieves gloom.
Add to this what must be the lumpiest company of players currently onstage in New York. Joel Hatch’s Mr. Zero is a zombie, benumbed by routine, his voice strangled to a faintly-protesting nasality. His wife is played by Cyrilla Baer, similarly doughy of figure; she manages to make a big impression playing small-mindedness. Amy Warren finds a touching delicacy in Mr. Zero’s sentimental co-worker, the most sympathetic (if slightly dim) figure in the piece. They perform the Schmidt-Loewith score with passion and precision.
After being impressed by director David Cromer’s work with some of Chicago’s most dynamic smaller theatres (most notably co-directing an award-winning production of Peter Parnell’s two-evening adaptation of John Irving’s Cider House Rules), it is a pleasure to see him make such an impressive splash in New York, following in the footsteps of such other Chicago directors as Mary Zimmerman, Robert Falls, Frank Galati and Gary Griffin.
If you’re thinking of coming to the States to indulge in a week or two of theatre, might I gently suggest that you skip New York this time and head straight to Chicago to see the stuff that will probably be impressing the pants off of Manhattan next season. August and Adding Machine originated by Steppenwolf and the Next respectively, but this is just a sample of the work that the nearly two hundred functioning companies there produce each season. Obviously, not all of this stuff is going to be first rate, but I can’t think of another city in the States regularly producing more new material of consequence or introducing more important talent. By the way, the tickets and hotels in Chicago cost about half what they would cost in New York.
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.
Not only has the play that won the 2007 Joseph Jefferson Award for best play in Chicago, August: Osage County, received the best reviews of the season for a new play in New York, but the winner of the Jeff for best musical, Adding Machine, has just opened off-Broadway to the best reviews of the season for a new musical. At the moment, at least, the best new work in Manhattan is not from Manhattan but a city where the weather is notorious nearly a thousand miles to the west.
By an odd coincidence, the play this musical is based on, Elmer Rice’s 1923 expressionistic drama The Adding Machine (and no, I have no idea why “The” was dropped for the musical’s title) will be broadcast on BBC Radio Three’s series Drama on Three on March 3 and will be available online for the following week. For years it has existed in the States mostly as an anthology-stuffer – one of those plays of sufficient significance that a case could be made for assigning drama students to read it but rarely receives a professional production of consequence. Its leading character, subtly named Mr. Zero, is a drudge who makes his living adding up numbers in some nameless and dimly-lit office. With the invention of the adding machine, his job is obliterated. The bad news hits him when, in fact, he is expecting a promotion. Unhinged, he murders his boss, spends time on death row, is executed, wakes up in Elysian Fields, finds an adding machine in the afterlife that excites his passion for crunching numbers, and is re-born to become a wage slave yet again.
Tempted to sing yet?
What struck me on the page as earnest, somewhat heavy-handed satire is transformed in this musicalization into a thing of oddly moving beauty. Major credit must go to the score by Joshua Schmidt and Jason Loewith which mostly eschews traditional song forms in favor of arias and musical scenes that would be at home specializing in chamber operas. Angular melodic lines are supported by accompaniment of surprising lyricism. The richness of the score is in contrast to the nearly monochromatic set designs depicting a world of punishing drabness lit to a level that barely achieves gloom.
Add to this what must be the lumpiest company of players currently onstage in New York. Joel Hatch’s Mr. Zero is a zombie, benumbed by routine, his voice strangled to a faintly-protesting nasality. His wife is played by Cyrilla Baer, similarly doughy of figure; she manages to make a big impression playing small-mindedness. Amy Warren finds a touching delicacy in Mr. Zero’s sentimental co-worker, the most sympathetic (if slightly dim) figure in the piece. They perform the Schmidt-Loewith score with passion and precision.
After being impressed by director David Cromer’s work with some of Chicago’s most dynamic smaller theatres (most notably co-directing an award-winning production of Peter Parnell’s two-evening adaptation of John Irving’s Cider House Rules), it is a pleasure to see him make such an impressive splash in New York, following in the footsteps of such other Chicago directors as Mary Zimmerman, Robert Falls, Frank Galati and Gary Griffin.
If you’re thinking of coming to the States to indulge in a week or two of theatre, might I gently suggest that you skip New York this time and head straight to Chicago to see the stuff that will probably be impressing the pants off of Manhattan next season. August and Adding Machine originated by Steppenwolf and the Next respectively, but this is just a sample of the work that the nearly two hundred functioning companies there produce each season. Obviously, not all of this stuff is going to be first rate, but I can’t think of another city in the States regularly producing more new material of consequence or introducing more important talent. By the way, the tickets and hotels in Chicago cost about half what they would cost in New York.
Jeffrey Sweet is a playwright, journalist and teacher, probably best known for his play THE VALUE OF NAMES, the musical WHAT ABOUT LUV? (which played the Orange Tree many years ago), and a history of Chicago's Second City comedy troupe called SOMETHING WONDERFUL RIGHT AWAY. A resident artist at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theatre, nine of his plays will soon appear in anthology published by Northwestern University Press.