Theatre review: Machinal

Richard Jones' production of Machinal was originally seen at the Theatre Royal Bath, something that's immediately apparent as Hyemi Shin's set clearly originates somewhere much smaller than the Old Vic: The sickly yellow wedge is very appropriate for conveying the claustrophobia of the story, a bit less ideal for the sightlines as it gets lost somewhere in the middle of the huge darkened stage, squeezed behind a pillar from where we were sitting*. Sophie Treadwell's 1928 play is considered a masterpiece of expressionism, something that's referenced in particular in the opening scenes as a young woman (Rosie Sheehy) travels on a packed New York subway train to her office, where her coworkers fuss and gossip about her being late. Adam Silverman's lighting throws their shadows onto the back walls to loom ominously over her.

This is a play about escape, in which every attempt to do so becomes another trap: The escape offered from this soul-destroying job is marriage, an option the woman hopes her mother (Buffy Davis) will dissuade her from, but she doesn't take the hint and lets her marry the boss.

Her husband (Tim Frances) doesn't notice but this is a disaster right from the honeymoon, where the young woman desperately tries to stay away from their bed. They do eventually have a child, but she only has anything resembling a happy physical relationship when she meets a young man (Pierro Niel-Mee) in a speakeasy, and begins an affair with him. He's actually a murderer, and as the play is based on the true story of Ruth Snyder, who killed her husband and became the first woman in New York to die in the electric chair, it's clear what kind of influence he'll have on her.

I last saw Machinal six years ago at the Almeida, and while Natalie Abrahami's production also enclosed the action in a box, the two shows feel very different (and not just because Abrahami managed to tell it in 3/4 of the time that Jones does.) Although clearly this is a play that takes a particularly strong lens to the place of women in society, Jones has focused almost exclusively on the gender politics rather than the wider economic and social themes (even the racism towards Mexicans in framed in terms of how it comes with a second-hand insult to the young woman.) One of the very few times the play takes the focus off Sheehy is when another woman at the speakeasy (Imogen Daines) is being pressured by her boyfriend (Emilio Iannucci) to have an abortion.

While there's no doubt Sheehy's giving a barnstorming performance here, it's so big and so frenetic, and the production is so laser-focused on it, I felt we lost some of the wider picture. Despite ending on a striking visual that encapsulates the way everyone has contributed to the way her story ends, with the cast forming a circuit leading to the electric chair switch that's been lurking on the set all along, it felt like the woman's madness was too big and too ever-present to see the stages by which capitalism caused it. It's still an ominous tragedy, but it feels less avoidable and more personal, more that of a particular damaged person and less that of an everywoman pushed too far.

Machinal by Sophie Treadwell is booking until the 1st of June at the Old Vic.

Running time: 2 hours straight through.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

*which takes some doing at the Old Vic, since it's such a big stage the pillars usually just cover a thin sliver of it; here the playing space is so small someone's invariably behind the obstruction