I haven't done any digging, so I don't know whence came all of the money behind Adding Machine, which has been transplanted from Chicago to the Minetta Lane Theater. We've all read and heard a great deal about how the current economics of Off-Broadway work against the financially successful production of musicals unless they're have teeny-tiny casts and modest production values. So I was amazed by the sets, lighting, costumes, and video design of this arresting musical based on Elmer Rice's expressionist 1923 play about a poor sap named Mr. Zero who, when summarily fired after working for 25 years in the basement of an anonymous company, reacts by killing his boss and is then executed for his crime.
But how does the score, by Joshua Schmidt (music and libretto) and Jason Loewith (co-librettist), stand up on CD without all the visual trappings? Very well, indeed.
The music for the first scene -- in which Mrs. Zero blathers to her husband in bed about a Hollywood scandal and then begins to berate him for his failings -- is appropriately annoying, and there are plenty of maddeningly repetitious notes and spiky harmonies for the subsequent scenes that show the identity-erasing mechanization of modern American society.
Schmidt's setting of the final sequence in the hereafter, where Mr. Zero's soul is recycled along with that of his unrequited lover Daisy, is truly unnerving. But there are also some lovely passages along the way, as in the scene where Mrs. Z. comes to visit her spouse on death row, or the moment when Daisy confesses her love for Zero.
highlight of the score is "I'd Rather Watch You," first sung by Daisy as a sensuous blues number and then reprised towards the end of the show as a gorgeous duet with Mr. Zero, backed by a chorus.
The performances -- especially those of Joel Hatch and Cyrilla Baer as the Zeros, and Amy Warren as Daisy -- register with remarkable clarity on the CD. As of this writing, Adding Machine is still playing at the Minetta Lane, and it should not be missed. But if you can't get there right away, pick up the PS Classics recording and marvel at the fact that this singular musical has somehow achieved well-deserved recognition and success in the present theatrical climate.
