Elmer Rice is a notable American dramatist whose best-remembered works among more than 30 produced plays are his Pulitzer-winning Street Scene (1929) and The Adding Machine (1923). Before considering The New Group’s production of a revised version of The Adding Machine, let’s note how Rice’s first Broadway hit, On Trial (1914), is credited as the first significant play to employ flashbacks to tell its story. Think of it: There are no flashbacks in Shakespeare or other classics unless a director fiddles with the chronology.
Rice utilizes no flashbacks in The Adding Machine, even though the play was considered avant-garde a century ago because it was composed in a relatively new and radical style called expressionism that had been drifting in from the German theater scene. In expressionism, reality is purposefully distorted to heighten whatever message the playwright hopes to send. Brecht’s Drums in the Night, O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape and Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata are typical of this influential genre, which led to the extremely pliable dramaturgy of many plays today.
In the case of The Adding Machine, Rice satirically depicts a clueless white-collar employee who sadly proves to be a replaceable cog in the modern industrial complex. The story begins in a bedroom late one night as middle-aged Mr. Zero silently listens to his wife ceaselessly yammer away about the movies, the neighbors and what a fool she was to marry a loser like him. “I didn’t pick much when I picked you,” snaps Mrs. Zero. The next day at the office, expecting to receive a salary increase for his 25 years of service as a clerk, Mr. Zero is informed that he is being supplanted by an adding machine. Only after Mr. Zero returns home to host a dinner party for similar other nonentities is it revealed that he has murdered his boss. A trial, an execution, and a not unpleasant after-life that the ultra-conventional Mr. Zero fails to appreciate are subsequent scenes in Rice’s often bitterly humorous drama.
At first thought, The Adding Machine appears to be an offbeat programming choice for The New Group, which favors new plays that often comment upon contemporary social issues. But what is more current today than a general fear that artificial intelligence is going to replace nearly everybody’s job? Moreover, this is a new version of the play, as revised by Thomas Bradshaw, whose The Seagull/Woodstock, NY adaptation of Chekhov was staged in 2023 by The New Group, which also premiered his Burning (2011) and Intimacy (2014).
Opening on Tuesday at the venerable Theater at St. Clement’s, which The New Group recently acquired for its home base, director Scott Elliott’s production delivers a smartly calibrated rendition of a century-old drama that reflects American anxieties that seem not so very different today. Bradshaw’s two-act edition offers clever if not entirely necessary introductory remarks to several sequences, such as “You are about to witness a heart-warming tale about modern life crushing the human spirit,” and fires up an electric chair for a blazing first act finish. But generally, Bradshaw respectfully and selectively trims the text while retaining much of Rice’s dialogue with its 1920s slang and coarse, prosaic talk that colors a thoughtless, crass society.
The play was staged back in the day with 20 or more actors. Here, Bradshaw reduces the cast list to four: Mr. Zero (Daphne Rubin-Vega), Mrs. Zero (Jennifer Tilly), Mr. Zero’s office wife Daisy (Sarita Choudhury), and a Narrator (Michael Cyril Creighton) who delivers commentary while depicting everybody else in the story. A capable actor, Rubin-Vega is dressed in men’s attire and manfully portrays Mr. Zero as a befuddled little fellow with a pencil moustache, Bronx accents and a plaintive nature. Tilly makes sharp use of her comedic skills and gurgling voice in a pitiless portrait of Mrs. Zero. Choudhury’s lovelorn Daisy remains an anxious soul even in the next world. Confidently narrating the tale, Creighton neatly presents multiple identities; during the dinnertime scene, Creighton proficiently summons up a range of comical voices to characterize a table full of people. Catherine Zuber designs the effective period clothes.
To instill the notion of a repetitive, mechanical world, scenic designer Derek McLane arranges a handsome, yet darkly looming background of a rear wall totally stacked in dozens of identical boxes, each one containing a precisely centered vintage 1920s item like a table lamp, an electric fan or a typewriter. Small units roll on to disclose the Zero bedroom with its hideous wallpaper or the big wooden filing cabinets that enclose Mr. Zero’s office. It is all beautifully and dramatically lit by Jeff Croiter, while Stan Mathabane’s subtly unsettling sound design melds industrial noise, tweaked vocals and faint music.
Some may argue that The Adding Machine works fine and needs no retooling, but Bradshaw’s reasonably faithful adaptation will be more economical for theaters to produce than the rarely staged original play. In accordance with the stylized nature of expressionist theater, director Scott Elliott cultivates a cool, slightly bizarre quality to his well-acted, seamlessly staged production.
