Music by Joshua Schmidt
Libretto by Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt
Based on the play The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice
Synopsis: Grimly comic and heartbreakingly beautiful, Adding Machine tells the story of Mr. Zero, a nameless cog in American business, as he journeys through life, death, and an afterlife romance in the Elysian Fields. After twenty-five years of exemplary work, Mr. Zero finds that his pencil and paper efforts have been replaced by a mechanical adding machine. In a rage, Mr. Zero decides to exact revenge by murdering his boss. A modern and eclectic score gives passionate and memorable voice to this stylish and stylized production.
NEW YORK TIMES:
"As that delicious moment suggests, the insistently bleak “Adding Machine” will be nobody’s idea of a giddy, escapist good time. But its unsentimental vision is executed with a commitment that is bracingly tonic. And its bitter tang leaves you with the significant consolation of viewing our own seemingly ever-darkening world with a measure of equanimity."
Read the whole review HERE.
VARIETY:
"For all its intellectual wit and visual cleverness, Cromer's production fails to draw a binding connection between Rice's industrial age and our own electronic universe -- a fatal lapse of imagination that may well allow the play's anguished message of doom to fall on deaf ears."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS:
"But even with all that going for it, the production simply failed to draw me in. It always kept me at a distance, muting the impact. That a musical about dehumanization is itself so alienating might be looked at as success or failure. Either way, "Adding Machine" is easier to admire than to enjoy."
Read the whole review HERE.
THEATERMANIA:
"One of Rice's major points is that Mr. Zero is not written to be a sympathetic figure. None of the characters are. They're adding-machine-like ciphers in a cautionary tale meant to wake observers up to leading more productive lives. To that intention and to their credit, the Adding Machine creators have held fast. "
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK POST:
"Although it hardly qualifies as light entertainment, "Adding Machine" is an exciting and adventurous piece of musical theater."
Read the whole review HERE.
NEW YORK SUN:
"But as the adding machines and other exemplars of modernity press forward, leaving crumpled-up artisans in their wake, the defiantly retrograde — and occasionally heavenly — medium of musical-theater craftsmanship remains in unapologetically grown-up hands."
Read the whole review HERE.
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