Get Out: The Adding Machine @ ACT Theatre

But we say "first half" because the second half of the play veers off in a completely new direction, and this cuts to the heart of the problem with this play. Its fundamental flaw is that the dramatic arc is completely mucked up: About 50 minutes into the play (which runs about 90 minutes with no intermission), it feels like you've reached the natural end; then you're subjected to a series of three more endings, each of which suggests a completely different interpretation of the whole. Again, there's little to fault with the production--the staging and scenery are remarkable, particularly given the no-doubt tight production budget, and the performances are near flawless--but the script just feels confused and the second half offers less opportunity for innovative staging than the first.

The story, in short, follows Mr. Zero, a bookkeeper, as he slogs his way through his boring life. The play open with a seering monologue by his wife, played by Amy Thone; sitting around the breakfast table, Mrs. Zero rants, going subject to subject: Mr. Zero's a failure because he's been doing the same job for decades (it's his anniversary at the company) and he's never going to get anywhere; he's cheap and won't take her to the right movie theatre, because she wants to see romances and she's sick of the Westerns at their normal theatre; and he's a pervert who wants to have an affair, but that woman, the strumpet who lived next door, she's in jail, she made him call the police and report her, and she's never coming back so he needn't keep staring out the window.

Thone delivers the monologue rapid fire, interspersed by brilliant staccato cackles (we don't know if Thone's ever done Beckett, but she'd be perfect in his plays), clutching a giant pair of sheers. All the while, Mr. Zero, played by Paul Morgan Stetler, morosely sits eating his breakfast, hunched over, ever more broken down by the world.

But the play's experimental dynamic is both to capture the soul-crushing nature of Zero's life while at the same time exposing the richer, more dramatic interior life of the character. This really explodes in the production's single best scene with Zero at work. In the office, the bookkeepers (all male) sit across little tables from their assistants (female); the assistant reads a value off a receipt, the bookkeeper enters it in the ledger. As the scene opens the cast performs a brilliant mechanical bit of choreography as they commence to their activities in perfect unison that captures the horror of a mechanized modern society as well as Metropolis or Koyaanisqatsi ever did.

The scene works on two levels: On one level, Zero and his assistant Daisy (Jennifer Lee Taylor) are working and this requires them to interact, but on the other level, both let their minds wander and soliloquy through random thoughts about their miserable lots in life and what they could have done to escape, which includes the unspoken sexual attraction between the two of them. The irony is that the more they let their minds wander, the more they each reflect on how much happier they could have been together, the crueler they actually treat one another because neither's paying attention and they're both screwing one another up.

But to condense the story, at the end of the day, Zero gets laid off by his boss because he's to be replaced by a more efficient adding machine. Suddenly breaking out of his quiet persona, Zero murders his boss. He returns home to a wonderfully choreographed party scene (which begins the play's exploration of racism and xenophobia as a crutch for the middle class's economic uncertainty) and gets arrested, sentenced to death, and eventually executed.

This marks the beginning of Zero's transformation, though. As soon as he's convicted, it's like a giant weight's been lifted from his shoulders. He's more relaxed, less uptight, more open with his wife. He's even strangely excited to see his name in the newspapers so much, and his wife's been collecting a scrap book of clippings for him. And he even partially opens up to her about his feelings for Daisy, not out of spite so much but simply because he no longer cares.

It's from this point on that the play loses its way. It feels wrapped up with a scene in which Zero, dead and in a cemetery, discusses what awaits him in the afterlife with another executed murderer, a religious psychopath named Shrdlu who murdered his mother (played with disturbing ease by Darragh Kennan) and is calmly convinced it's an eternity of torment. It feels like you've reached the end when the gates to the afterlife open for them and they head in to the great beyond.

But there's three more scenes, each with a different conclusion. We won't go into them too much (be surprised!), suffice it to say that the play's eventual ending strikes us as being so cynical as to rob itself of most of its political bite, because for most of it, this is a deeply political play about power, economics, fairness, race, gender (even), and immigration. It's eventual ending, which proposes an inherent tendency on some people's part towards slavishness, doesn't offer much hope of progress and conversely suggests that as bad as things are, that's how they're supposed to be.

In terms of the production, NCTC does a marvelous job, but the material's not as rich as the first half of the show. The script itself gets kind of gimmicky once Mr. Zero enters the afterlife, and it's a sign of NCTC's skill that they manage to keep it feeling original. But compared to the powerful scenes of the office, the homelife, or the trial, the second half just isn't as dynamic.

In short, like any show, The Adding Machine has its flaws, but overall it packs so much wallop that at worst you're sort of just irritated at Elmer Rice for not doing a better job for this cast and company. We have to reiterate: This really is the best show playing in town right now, and is definitely one of the best all year. It's productions like this that make people fall for the theatre in the first place. If there's anyone you really want to screw with, bring them to this play; they'll fall for the theatre then spend years subsequently being disappointed.

Photo of Darragh Kennan as Shrdlu, above, by Chris Bennion.