01/29/2014
Machinal
By: Eugene Paul
Rebecca
Hall and Morgan Spector
in
a scene from Machinal
(Photo
credit: Joan Marcus)
If
you look up “Machinal” in English dictionaries, you’ll find definitions
centering on its reference to machines. The French do it better: they liken
“Machinal” to one’s life becoming machine like. Rebecca Hall, lovely scion of
British theatre in general and of distinguished Sir Peter Hall in particular,
stars in the outstanding Roundabout Theatre Company production of this first
revival since the play’s opening in New York in 1928 when Sophie Treadwell’s
expressionistic drama first caught fire but no revival has had the central
character, the Young Woman, so dazzlingly embodied. Actually, it’s a clash.
The
central character, the Young Woman, is supposed to be ordinary, an underlying
emphasis of the Treadwell play which becomes impossible from the very first
opening scene thrillingly staged right off the bat by hot new British director
Lyndsey Turner. (Cannot forget her production of Posh.) In a proscenium
crammed with drab strap hangers, hanging on authentic straps clear across the
stage, tall Hall, exquisite, spotlighted, struggles to exit the subway car,
already late to her job. In the next scene swiftly swinging into place by set
designer Es Devlin’s marvelously fluid stage apparatus, everybody in her office
robotically hard at work, mechanisms making Business. No one in our program is
identified by name: each is a type, Clerk, Telephone Operator, Mother, Husband,
Man in Bar, First Reporter, Lover, over forty characters enacted by our cast of
eighteen, the Young Woman, Rebecca Hall, in every scene.
We’re
strangely apprehensive about her, with her, for her. We know playwright
Treadwell is hammering a point: this girl cannot stand the squirrel cage of a
life she is in - get up, go to work, turn over pay to mother for rent, for
food, go to bed, get up, go to work, turn over pay. Again and again. She’s got
to get out, even if the only way seems to be to marry that horrible stuffed
shirt, her boss (Michael Cumpsty) who can’t keep his hands off her. (Cumpsty is
so good you look forward to more of his awfulness and you get it.) Her Mother
(splendid Suzanne Bertish) nags her to marry this wonderful man and thus take
care of the two of them. Of course, the girl has to marry him. Of course, she’s
in another prison. And when they make a baby, the walls close in. With fiendish
skill, director Turner stages the mechanical goings on of a hospital and the
inviolable dominance of the male doctors. Suddenly the girl looks like the
person depicted in Klimt’s “Scream.”
Jason
Loughlin, Rebecca Hall and Ryan Dinning
in
a scene from Machinal
(Photo
credit: Joan Marcus)
But
in a following scene, she’s in a bar drinking, and picked up by a hunky lover
(Morgan Spector). That leads to them in bed. She’s free in an addled sort of
way but he’s freer; he’s going back to Mexico where you’re really free. If
you’re a man.
And
she’s back in her chains, the chains of matrimony, the chains of motherhood,
the chains of being subject to mother and husband. The play has changed. It is
no longer the general rat race, it’s personal, personal choice, personal
freedom. How can you have your freedom and live in this world?
Which
might make a far more poignant experience for us if the girl were just an
ordinary girl, even a pretty, ordinary girl. But Rebecca Hall is far and away a
creature of grace and acculturation as well as beauty, unmissable wherever she
might find herself. And Michael Krass’ period costumes, so successful for his
large company, simply enhance every line, every gesture of Ms. Hall no matter
how frantically ordinary she tries to be. Putting stockings on those mile long
legs becomes a work of art. She can’t help it.
Therefore
it is not a spoiler to tell you that this lovely, desirable creature becomes
even lovelier as she is put on trial for the murder of her husband, nor do you
bother to doubt the clumsy devices the playwright engineers to convict her. You
cannot believe that you are going to see this bewitching being end up in the
electric chair. And when that happens after a long, doleful, dour march, are
you outraged? Even though she confessed? Are you infuriated? No, this path was
laid from the beginning. Well, then, at least, are you upset? Yes, you can be
upset but you’ll applaud a large, beautifully staged company in an unstintingly
fine production with a stunner of a central star. It’s a theatrical feast, with
just a little colic in the offing, but then, you don’t get either one every
day.
Machinal
(through
March 2, 2014)
Roundabout
Theatre Company
American
Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street, between Broadway and Eighth
Avenue, in Manhattan
For
tickets, call 212-719-1300 or visit http://www.roundabouttheatre.org
Running
time: 95 minutes without an intermission
