Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine has been turned into a chamber musical -- opera is perhaps more correct -- by two young theater craftsmen, composer Joshua Schmidt and librettist Jason Loewith.
When he was fresh out of college, the latter went to work as production manager at the Odyssey Theater; now, twenty years later, he returns to Odyssey with his pet project, a musical adaptation of Rice's 1923 Expressionist drama (which was inspired by the work of German playwright, Georg Kaiser).
Adding Machine: The Musical comes to the West Coast four years after its premieres in Chicago and New York (where it won a Lucille Lortel Award for Best New Musical in 2008). Adding Machine tells a dark, sardonic, but still-relevant story about an Everyman crushed under the iron heel of capitalism.
Mr. Zero (Clifford Morts) has spent 25 years in the counting room of a large corporation, adding up numbers in robot-like fashion with a chorus of fellow drones (Greta McAnany, Travis Leland, Nick Tubbs and Mandy Wilson). Poor Zero is also stuck with a shrew of a wife (Kelly Lester) who criticizes his every move. The only good thing in his life is the secretary with whom he's in love, Daisy Dorothea Buchanan (Christine Horn, a statuesque beauty with an appealing singing voice). Zero is also cheered by the expectation that his boss (Alan Abelew) will reward his long, faithful years of employment by promoting him to a front-office job. Imagine Zero's shock and rage when he is informed, instead, that the company no longer needs his services.
Having been tossed on society's scrapheap, Zero ultimately takes his revenge by killing his boss, an act that leads to his arrest and execution. This in turn causes Daisy to kill herself. The two lovers meet in heaven -- satirized by the aria, "A Pleasant Place" -- but even here Zero is unable to take the step that will finally free him from his restraints."
Dostoyevsky made the same comment about a man who finds himself alone and alienated in a hostile world: "He has no more pressing need than the one to find somebody to whom he can surrender, as quickly as possible, that gift of freedom which he, the unfortunate creature, was born with."
Adding Machine's music & lyrics are dense, complex, even difficult (director Ron Sossi calls it "Sondheim squared"). But its bite and brilliance emerge, thanks to Sossi's ingenious staging and production values, and to the
splendid performances by the nine-person cast.
