Machinal
American Airlines Theatre
January 18 2014
3 Stars
In 1928 there debuted on Broadway a play, Machinal, written by Sophie Treadwell, a woman who led a remarkable life as journalist, playwright of 40 plays, director and activist.
Despite being a taut, expressionist drama, full of savage observation and acute insight, it has never returned to Broadway until now, where Lyndsey Turner’s production for the Roundabout Theatre Company is now playing at the American Airlines Theatre.
Turner is a director of great innovation, precise and detailed in every way and with a tremendous and often unfeasibly sound ability to translate and conceptualise work for the modern audience. With Treadwell’s writing, it is a happy and utterly desirably marriage.
The play is a no holds barred attack on the way society, particularly men but also women (albeit because of men) mistreat and misuse women. No small wonder, then, that the male dominated world of Broadway has not seen the need to revive this play. But even the archest patriarch would be hard pressed to see anything amiss with Turner’s vision of Treadwell’s seminal work, which, in a series of nine snapshot scenes, traces the life, or lack of it, of a young woman who is sent to the electric chair for murder.
Es Devlin’s set is as much a character in the production as anyone who speaks: it is a triumph of design. A simple Art Deco rectangular box which revolves, becoming at various times a crowded subway, a marital home, a hospital, a seedy speakeasy, a lovers’ lair, a courtroom and an execution chamber. The relentless movement of the set adds immeasurably to the build up of tension and the immersion into the claustrophobic masculine world the young woman must chart.
Jane Cox lights the set perfectly, setting the tone of depression (both era and individual mood) and especially clever is the use of a full stage horizontal sliver of light which emphasises the trapped existence of the young woman – indeed, the set, as a whole, regularly evokes the sense of a coffin, one in which the young woman is trapped and can only see out of through the sliver of light.
Direction and design combine with the word to create a powerful tapestry of evocative despair and mounting horror. With one exception, the cast is utterly sublime, actors effortlessly working together to create Turner’s specific and sometimes stylised concept of Treadwell’s world for the young woman.
Michael Cumpsty is magnificently offensive as the ghastly successful businessman who marries the young woman and then dies at her hands. His ability to be unnerving and irritating is masterful. If he had kept talking, I would have killed him. Morgan Spector is excellent as the languid lothario who seduces the young woman and gives her the idea for the murder, not because he wants to help her but because he is big noting himself. Spector presents perfectly the spectre of the cunning wolf who will say anything to have the hen.
There is a delicious scene in a speakeasy where Damian Baldet’s vile two-timing businessman introduces the young woman to Spector while on either side of them two different vignettes play out: in the first, a predatory older gay man (Arnie Burton, perfect) uses fine words, the promise of money and expensive alcohol to seduce a young pretty boy obviously in desperate circumstances (Ryan Dinning, very winning); in the second, a street wise man (Dion Graham, first class) is convincing a woman (Karen Walsh, just right) to have an illegal street abortion. As presented by Treadwell and Turner, the audience is led to accept the two vignettes as appropriate, and a stark contrast to the behaviour of the young woman with Spector. It’s masterful work.
Suzanne Bertish is wonderful as the mother of the young woman and in one quite short scene establishes beyond doubt the trauma the young woman has suffered her whole life as Mother strives to ensure that the men of the world are happy.
Everyone in the ensemble really does first-rate work and there are no false notes, no dropped lines, no broken sense of period.
Unsurprisingly though, despite everything that Turner and her team and ensemble cast have achieved, Treadwell’s play cannot work unless the young woman is played by a remarkable actress. It’s a difficult gig: the young woman is shattered and broken at the start of the play, finds a chance at cohesion and happiness and then loses it all, finally being electrocuted on stage.
Although almost a blank page, an actress of real skill and subtlety could make this a once-in-lifetime role. It’s the kind of part Cate Blanchett, Lily Rabe, Rachel Weiss, Carey Mulligan, Tamsin Carroll or Cush Jumbo would play. It needs virtuosity, a real command of vocal dexterity, shimmering lightness, deeply felt agony and passion, innocent calculation and assiduous, unrelenting technical skill.
What it does not need is a person incapable of leaving a handprint in wet paint, a person for whom monotony is second nature, a person with a voice that would bore into one’s consciousness like a mosquito would one’s inaccessible lower back, a person with the stage charisma and appeal of a cold sausage roll in Antarctica – yet, in the vastly over-rated Rebecca Hall, that is the card dealt to Turner and team.
It is as fundamental a mistake as, say, having Alan Cumming (fine performer that he is) play Joanne in a revival of Sondheim’s Company. It is abhorrent and almost unimaginable. And yet, there she is, woefully out of her depth as the young woman who is Treadwell’s hero. Her final scream of pain as the electric currents took her life should be chilling and heart-stopping, as well as sharply resonating the fact of a life lost because of the harshness of men and society and their combined pressures; instead it was as if she had pricked her thumb whilst sewing.
The audience was not fooled either; their tepid applause was a damning indictment of the alleged star turn. And the production company plants calling out “Brava” made no impression; the packed audience would not rise to its feet or even sustain applause for a second curtain call.
It’s a great pity, because Turner’s vision of Treadwell’s remarkable play is really quite something.
Alas, Rebecca Hall is not.
