THE ADDING MACHINE
Whitireia Performance Centre, 25-27 Vivian Street, Wellington
06/05/2015 - 12/05/2015
Production Details
After two and a half years as Artistic Director of Long Cloud Youth Theatre, Stella Reid is preparing to make her last show with the company this May.
Taking influence from films like Dogville, Brazil and the work of Haruki Murakami, Long Cloud Youth Theatre presents The Adding Machine, an adaptation of the 1923 play by Elmer Rice about the dehumanising effects of mass culture. The play speaks to youth culture’s growing interest in the development of technology and our society of the screen.
The Adding Machine centres on Zero, a little cog with big dreams. Today he watches the clock for his big meeting with his Boss. After 25 years in the same job, he figures things must add up to a promotion.
Mrs. Zero is expecting company tonight. She will sit Mr. and Mrs. Three at opposite ends of the table. Mrs. One is asking Mr. One where he was last night and EVERYONE is talking about the Sevens’ divorce.
But the edge of town is beginning to reduce in value. The fabric of the city limits is beginning to fray.
There is a deserted house on the periphery: Mrs. Zero sometimes scalds Mr. Zero for staring at it. “She” lives there. The courthouse gave her six months, but most of the townspeople agree she should have got six years.
In a graveyard near the courthouse is Shrdlu, whom no one has ever met. Wearing newspaper clothes, she waits to hear how she will be punished for her crimes.
18 actors spill onto the Whitireia stage to create the world of this epic narrative that occupies a shadowland somewhere between surrealism, science fiction and silent film.
6th-12th May, 7:30pm
WHITIREIA THEATRE, 25- 27 Vivian St, Wellington
$18/$14 | BOOKINGS PHONE 04 238 622504 238 6225 or ONLINE www.thetheatre.co.nz
Separate schools showing, for details email longcloudyouththeatre@gmail.com
Long Cloud, run by Whitireia New Zealand and based in Wellington, is a unique training and production company for young people aged 16-21. The Company gives young actors the means to enhance their theatrical skills through practical performance experience and the opportunity to work with Wellington’s foremost theatrical directors and tutors. Company credits are THE MOUNTEBANK (2014), LOST CAUSE (2014), ONEIRONAUT (2013), THE BACCHAE (2013), PERFECTLY WASTED (2013), WHEELER’S LUCK (2012), ANOTHER BEGGAR’S OPERA (2012), ASSISTED LIVING (2012), TOM KEEPER PASSES (2012) YO FUTURE (2011) SHEEP (2011), DAUGHTERS OF HEAVEN (2011), EQUUS (2010), THE SEAGULL (2010), VERNON GOD LITTLE (2010), TITUS ANDRONICUS (2009), THE CRUCIBLE (2009), GRIMM & COLONY! (2008 & 2009) and
Theatre ,
A mature and masterful insight into the past, present and future
Review by Thomas Aitken 08th May 2015
The Adding Machine follows the all too familiar story of a number-crunching employee at a large faceless corporation who becomes lost in the repetitive tedium of his job. The crowd is dragged into the nearly intolerable existence of Zero as he adds and calculates the same figures over and over while constantly reassuring himself that his 25 years in the job are leading somewhere. He’s convinced he’s due for a promotion but, as the audience are shown the frantic pace of his work day, it becomes unclear if his job is even necessary.
Elmer Rice’s 1923 play is thrust into absolute relevance as the Adding Machine deals with such issues as the individual pursuit of profit, the dehumanising effects of mass culture, sexism and racism. The dystopian feel to Zero’s reality is intensified by the fact that these issues are increasingly important in the present day. The story is almost trapped in a void that Director Stella Reid describes as “an ahistorical vortex – fifty years in the past, but also (if we aren’t careful), fifty years in the future.”
Reid’s adaption seamlessly moves between time periods, from the swinging Jazz-filled racism of the Southern United States to a much more local present-day New Zealand, the minimalist set creating a barren environment which transcends the different time zones and settings throughout the show with ease.
The Adding Machine is a story that, along with the likes of Huxley’s Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984, could be viewed as a self-fulfilling prophecy if the underlying messages are not taken seriously. Keegan Bragg’s depiction of Zero is excellent, for while the character is despicable and unlikable at the best of times, his twisted reality shows him as only human and simply a product of a failed system.
Long Cloud Youth Theatre brilliantly executes the madness experienced by Zero with a cast of 18 talented actors. They expertly play with sound levels, creating deafening soundscapes of background noise, reinforcing just how much noise and stimuli we experience on a daily basis. The stark contrast between this and the silence of Zero’s inner-most thoughts illustrates just how easily one can lose grip of reality in a culture of over-stimulation and monotony.
Reid also makes great use of the Whitirea Theatre, using a simple and moveable set to minimise and maximise the size of the stage. The audience experiences heightened feelings of claustrophobia and the inescapable nature of existence with an intimate stage, only to have the space shattered open, demonstrating the vastness and loneliness that can be life on Earth.
The large cast are never idle, circling around Zero and forming crowds to include and exclude him. The Adding Machines invites the audience to share the emotional highs and lows that come with being a cog in a faceless, corporate machine, sending him into an existential crisis.
This is Reid’s final piece after two and a half years as Artistic Director for Long Cloud Youth Theatre and it’s a mature and masterful insight into the past, present and future of the realities we build up around ourselves.
On until Tuesday May 12th at Whitireia Theatre – 7.30 pm.
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