Review: ‘The Adding Machine’ at Actors’ Gang

From left: Pierre Adeli (Mr. Zero) and Mariana Jacuzzi (Ms. Devore) in "The Adding Machine" at The Actors' Gang (Photo by Bob Turton Photography)

How do you enslave yourself? What soulless thing do you regularly do because you believe you have to, even though it detracts from your sense of life’s beauty and joy? Despite its calculating title, those are the questions behind “The Adding Machine,” boldly staged by The Actors’ Gang through this weekend.

Creatively directed by Cihan Sahin, this 1923 expressionist comedy-drama by Elmer Rice uses the new-fangled “adding machine” as an example of technology replacing humans, in this case bookkeeper Mr. Zero (a sympathetic Pierre Adeli, with traces of Ralph Kramden), who has spent 25 years adding up small sales figures for a store — until his boss tells him that an adding machine will replace him.

From left: Mariana Jaccazio (Ms. Devore) and Pierre Adeli (Mr. Zero) in "The Adding Machine" at The Actors' Gang (Photo by Bob Turton Photography)

Playwright Rice — a politically minded and prolific writer in his day — wrote the play in an expressionistic style where characters are types and sets symbolic to more starkly convey modern alienation and anxiety. This works well with the theatre troupe’s experimental, commedia dell'arte, ensemble emphasis, as directed by Sahin.

We are introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Zero (Zoe Molina) first romantically courting then counting through their 25 years of marriage as the mythic figure of Sisyphus (Kirk Palmer) pushes a boulder up a hill at the back of the stage, only for it to roll down again.

Pierre Adeli (Mr. Zero) in "The Adding Machine" at The Actors' Gang (Photo by Bob Turton Photography)

The marriage now clearly hollowed out, Mr. Zero is silent while Mrs. Zero delivers a long, scathing yet hilarious monologue (brilliantly delivered by Molina, channeling an embittered Edith Bunker) about his career failure, her endless scrubbing of floors and what so-and-so said about any of the many movies playing in town.

A party Mr. and Mrs. Zero host with Mr. and Mrs. One, Two, Three and Four has each couple wearing a disconcerting semi-human mask while skewering the artifices of polite formalities through their exaggerated social behavior (the entire ensemble’s talent on full display, as it is in later prison scene as well).

From left: Megan Stogner, Brent Hinkley, Mariana Jaccazio and Chad Reinhart in "The Adding Machine" at The Actors' Gang (Photo by Bob Turton Photography)

At work, Mr. Zero and his bookkeeping assistant Ms. Devore (a luminous Mariana Jaccazio) recite numbers as we hear their inner thoughts — she wondering why he seems to hate her and wanting to die and he wishing he’d engaged physically with the “bum” trampy woman who had moved into their “respectable” neighborhood until Mrs. Zero called the cops on her.

When his business-minded boss (Chad Reinhart) fires him after 25 years, Mr. Zero reacts out of righteous passion — perhaps for the first time in his life.

But that’s really just the beginning of Mr. Zero’s story, which takes us to a sarcastically zoo-like prison showcasing the “North American murderer,” a graveyard filled with unrestful souls, the mythic Elysian Fields — beautifully evoked by Sahin and Patrick O’Connor’s projections and David Robbins’ music — and a heavenly place where a mysterious The Fixer (Brent Hinkley) allows Mr. Zero to sum up numbers on a new adding machine for even more decades than he had scribbled figures on earth.

From left: Pierre Adeli (Mr. Zero) and Adam J. Jefferis (Shrdlu) in "The Adding Machine" at The Actors' Gang (Photo by Bob Turton Photography)

But The Fixer also describes a future technology that excites Mr. Zero beyond his wildest dreams — a machine that can measure human labor down to each shovel full of coal, operated by the merest touch of a big toe.

Mr. Zero is given the choice to operate such amazing accounting technology or to share profound joy, love and beauty beyond “respectable” social dictates — in other words, a choice of the Matrix, Plato’s cave, or any metaphorically comfortable place of dim shadows and conditioned habit, or the radiance of fully living. Which would you dare to choose?

From left: Brent Hinkley (The Fixer) and Pierre Adeli (Mr. Zero) in "The Adding Machine" at The Actors' Gang (Photo by Bob Turton Photography)

After 100 years, we find ourselves in the same ongoing situation of technology replacing human labor as in the play — automated assembly lines, computers, robotics and most recently artificial intelligence (AI) taking “thinking” jobs like writing and analysis, but also artistry. Are our lives becoming easier as a result, or just differently enslaved?

While “The Adding Machine” is a very weird kind of play to experience — almost like a reverse morality tale with its unusual spiritual perspective and not really much to do with calculators — The Actors’ Gang brings it to life in such a sharp, haunting and thought-provoking way, one can’t help but think about the numbered years of one’s own life.

The Actors’ Gang’s “The Adding Machine” continues through April 18 in the Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City, with shows Thursday and Saturday at 8 p.m. For tickets and information, call the box office at 310-838-4264 or visit TheActorsGang.com. Run time is 2 hours and 10 minutes, including intermission.