Hell Is the Modern World in “Machinal”

Sophie Treadwell’s expressionistic telling of one woman’s struggle to find her way in a world she experiences as mechanistically cold and condemningly absurd seems to spring from Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and David Lynch. The fact that Machinal, completed in 1928, predates these three seeming predecessors (Kafka wasn’t published in English until 1930, Beckett wasn’t published at all until 1929, and Lynch was born in 1946) makes Treadwell’s achievement all the more impressive. And although Cal Rep’s current production may not fully capitalize on that achievement, it easily comes close enough to communicate this masterpiece’s continuing relevance.

The office in which Helen (April Sigman-Marx) works functions like a machine, largely because the people there are unquestioning cogs. But Helen can’t quite make herself fit. She is unpunctual; she is inefficient. But she has an out: her wealthy and powerful boss, George H. Jones (Tom Trudgeon), wants her as his bride. Though her skin crawls at the thought of the touch of his fat hands, seemingly it’s an escape. Unfortunately for her, it becomes immediately apparent that she’s simply traded one deterministic gaol for another.

Machinal presents an interesting acting challenge for its lead, as Treadwell moves her through nine scenes (or “episodes,” as the playwright calls them) with dialogic styles that emulate the various milieus wherein Helen finds herself. In the first episode, for example, Helen falls in with the robotically efficient chatter of her workplace:

STENOGRAPHER: You’re late!

FILING CLERK: You’re late.

ADDING CLERK: You’re late.

STENOGRAPHER: And yesterday!

FILING CLERK: The day before.

ADDING CLERK: And the day before.

STENOGRAPHER: You’ll lose your job?

HELEN: No!

STENOGRAPHER: No?

HELEN: I can’t!

STENOGRAPHER: Can’t?

FILING CLERK: Rent—bills—installments—miscellaneous.

ADDING CLERK: A dollar ten—ninety-five—3.40—35—12.60.

STENOGRAPHER: Then why are you late?

HELEN: Why?

STENOGRAPHER: Excuse!

ADDING CLERK: Excuse!

FILING CLERK: Excuse.

TELEPHONE GIRL: Excuse it, please.

STENOGRAPHER: Why?

HELEN: The subway?

TELEPHONE GIRL: Long distance?

FILING CLERK: Old stuff!

ADDING CLERK: That stall!

STENOGRAPHER: Stalled?

Then in the next episode the dialog downshifts to reflect the life that Helen shares at home with her mother (Leslie Valdez), as they discuss the possibility of Helen’s accepting Jones’s proposal:

HELEN: Tell me—you’re skin oughtn’t to curl—ought it—when he just comes near you—ought it? That’s wrong, ain’t it? You don’t get over that, do you—ever, do you or do you? How is it, Ma—do you?

MOTHER: Do you what?

HELEN: Do you get used to, it—so after a while it doesn’t matter? Or don’t you? Does it always matter? You ought to be in love, oughtn’t you, Ma? You must be in love, mustn’t you, Ma? That changes everything, doesn’t it—or does it?

Episodes that follow include domestic life as Mrs. Jones (stylistically dominated by his cliché-ridden optimism), a maternity ward (clinical, sterile), and a court proceeding (adversarial, litigious). Sigman-Marx excels in all of it, managing always to display Helen’s ill-at-ease core, regardless of what milieu is being reflected off her surface. Viewing Sigman-Marx up close (in my case, from the third row) only helps to reveal how good she is, able to display facially even the subtlest of the hairpin turns of the association-of-ideas style with which Treadwell imbues her. But even in the back row of the auditorium no-one could miss how commandingly Sigman-Mark fires off Helen’s machine-gun monologs. This is easily one of the greatest theatrical roles of the first half of the 20th century, and Sigman-Marx is equal to the task.

As much as Helen is the center of the Machinal universe, the space around her has to live and breathe for the play to work. Much more than being a study of a single character, Machinal concerns the coldly encroaching, suffocating nature of modernity. On that score, Cal Rep’s production is mostly successful, although director Julianne Just’s interpretation is probably too spartan. Machinal is a play about having arrived in an uncomfortably crowded future, with Treadwell anticipating the Digital Age; Cal Rep’s production is too analog, too spare. It’s not that it doesn’t look good (Szu Yun Wang’s lighting is a help here), but there should be more of it.

Chris Porter’s sound design hits closer to the mark. From the buzzing that separates each episode to the hums that run underneath them to the music, chatter, and unidentifiable hodgepodge of sound saturating the background, noise pollution is itself a minor character. At times it may be a little distracting, but thematically it’s difficult to fault.

An aural element that is all Just’s is having the supporting cast provide whispered echoes of both dialog and Helen’s thoughts or feelings. This device falls flat in one scene, but it’s a bold choice and works just about everywhere else. These are the voices in Helen’s head, the static that society broadcasts into the receiver that is her soul. Our hearing those voices, too, certainly helps us share her unease.

The supporting cast is solid. As Helen’s husband, Trudgeon is good in all his scenes, but nowhere better than their honeymoon, where his obtusely self-congratulating sense of husbandly entitlement is truly revolting. The standout of the minor characters is Chris Bange, who effects a memorable, effortlessly comedic turn with his small part as a man in a café.

With her daring, compelling, unflinching script, Sophie Treadwell masterfully crystallizes many of the philosophical themes that dominated her time: fears of losing our humanity in an increasingly automated world, women struggling to chart their own course, early existential preoccupations with freedom and free will. Cal Rep is to be commended for digging up Treadwell’s too-little-known treasure. It’s a shame their production is enjoying such a short run (seven performances over the course of eight days), because this is a play that enacts not only elements of the Zeitgeist in the 1920s, but questions that appear to be hauntingly timeless. In Machinal, the modern world is definitely a dystopia, but no more dystopian than it is in real life. What Treadwell intuited so powerfully as this new day was dawning is that, for at least some of us, the modern world is a nightmare from which we cannot wake.

Time: Wed–Sat, 8 p.m. (Thurs. 7 p.m.), Sun 2 p.m., Runs through Oct. 21
Cost: $15-$20
Details: (562) 985-5526, Calrep.org
Venue: California Repertory, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach