NEW YORK — All of a sudden, there seems to be the flowering of a particular theatrical specimen long thought missing in action — the off-Broadway musical.
In the past month, “The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island” and “Next to Normal” arrived with varying degrees of ambition and success. Now an even more daring little show has made its way to off-Broadway, this time to the Minetta Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village.
“Adding Machine,” based on Elmer Rice’s expressionistic 1920s drama, is an intriguing, adventurous musical that captures the dark, disturbing aspects of the play while, at the same time, pushes into chamber-opera territory.
Yet this 90-minute adaptation does not neglect the more conventional roots of musical theater either, grounding the show in some haunting melodies that would not be out place in the pop world of the pre-Depression era. In other words, Joshua Schmidt’s music is astonishingly diverse.
Schmidt collaborated with Jason Loewith on the libretto, and the show had its world premiere last year in Evanston, Ill., at the Next Theatre Company, which Loewith runs. Their tale sticks closely to Rice’s grim Everyman saga: Mr. Zero, a loyal company cog, is laid off after 25 years of exacting servitude. In a rage, he murders his boss and is sentenced to die. On Death Row, he meets a strange young man who has murdered his mother. And, finally, in the afterlife (a flower-bedecked world), he hooks up with an amorous co-worker, Daisy.
Even before prison, Zero’s private life was as unrelenting as his professional one. He’s married to a scalding nag, who opens the show with an aria of bitter complaining.
The cast rises to the show’s often difficult vocal demands. Joel Hatch projects the hangdog defeatism that infects Mr. Zero, while Cyrilla Baer expertly negotiates the often unnerving music for Mrs. Zero, his squawking helpmate, with ease. Amy Warren makes a touching “other woman,” the third part of a love triangle that is doomed even before it begins. That counts for a lot in a musical where vulnerability is scarce.
There is an appropriate rat-tat-tat repetitiveness to the lyrics, particularly in Mr. Zero’s soul-demeaning place of employment, where the daily grind is portrayed with clever musical inventiveness.
A superb chorus plays a variety of roles including co-workers, prison guards and the gossipy friends of the Zeros.
Director David Cromer has marshaled a crack production team that contributes mightily to the show’s success. Much of the musical is performed in shadows — the exemplary lighting design is by Keith Parham — lending an eerie, otherworldly air to Rice’s often macabre story.
The play is uncompromising in its bleakness. So is the musical. But marrying Rice’s play to the impressive score by Schmidt and Loewith makes “Adding Machine” provocative entertainment.
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