Adding Machine

On its way to becoming a musical a couple of years ago, Elmer Rice's 1923 expressonistic play, The Adding Machine, lost its definite article and a bunch of speaking roles but picked up a three-piece band and -- judging from its current GableStage production -- quite possibly a new generation of fans.

This is the story, here and in the hereafter, of Mr. Zero, a henpecked, bitter, clueless man who's fired from his back-of-the-store job toting up receipts on the 25th anniversary of his employment. There's a new adding machine, explains the boss, with keys and a nifty hand crank, that can do the work so easily that even a high school girl could operate it -- whereupon Mr. Zero kills the boss.

This is the first regional staging of a work that debuted in Chicago two years ago and opened off-Broadway a year after that. In Coral Gables, producing artistic director Joseph Adler delivers an efficient, handsome, engrossing 90-minute production that never falters.

Joshua Schmidt's music early in the show brings to mind Sondheim, but the combination and flow of styles -- including a nicely melodic solo, "I'd Rather Watch You" for Daisy, Mr. Zero's younger but longtime workmate, and the gospel and blues tunes of convicted killer Shrdlu -- are reminscent of Kander and Ebb. Choreography seems to be grow organically from the action, and sound is calibrated to the small theater.

A spare, multilevel set starts out by projecting numbers on a backdrop -- notably excluding the zero. Later, Elysian Fields emerges as softer and more colorful -- and confusing to some of its recent arrivals.

Top-notch performances throughout the nine member cast include the two couples that form the chorus of neighbors and other roles; Stacy Schwartz (last seen at GableStage as a presidential speech writer in David Mamet's November) as the unhappy Daisy; Jim Ballard as the tormented Shrdlu; Ken Clement (just off his quietly stunning performance in The Seafarer at Mosaic Theater) as the boss and two other characters.

As Mr. And Mrs. Zero, Oscar Cheda and Maribeth Graham are peerless apart or together. The couple's struggle to reconcile over a last meal in prison is a scene constructed around three songs and, in this Adding Machine, delivers far more than the sum of its parts.