Review: ADDING MACHINE: A MUSICAL, Finborough Theatre, 30 September 2016

You wait all year for an unconventional, award-winning musical that eschews catchy numbers and dance routines in favour of modernist soundscapes and psychological turmoil - and then two come along in a week!

Hot on the heels of the extraordinary Floyd Collins at Wilton's Music Hall, comes the equally disorienting Adding Machine: A Musical to the claustrophobic Finborough Theatre - a man trapped by the alienation of 20th century work and an audience trapped (happily so) in the confines of one of London's most intimate spaces.

Mr Zero works as a clerk in accounts, drudging his way through endless receipts to make subtotals that make totals that show profits. He lusts after a younger colleague (who quite fancies him too) but neither has the guts to follow their emotions and both stay within society's norms. That's very much to the cost of Zero, who returns every night to his shrewish wife to be lacerated by her vicious tongue. When Zero is called into the boss's office on the 25th anniversary of his starting at the firm, he thinks it's to be recognised with a promotion - it isn't, and Zero, for once, takes matters into his own hands.

Elmer Rice's play (on which Joshua Schmidt and Jason Loewith based their musical) was written in the 1920s and plenty of the Expressionist vibe has been retained, with 25 shades of grey for costumes, robotic movement, and acting which communicates raw feelings rather than builds rounded characters. There's something of Brecht too in the notices that introduce the scenes and more than a bit of Wilhelm Reich's Little Man in Zero's self-sabotaging of his routes out of misery. It's no surprise to find out that the show premiered Off-Broadway in 2008, straight into the teeth of capitalism's biggest crisis since the 1930s.

Ben Ferguson's band do a magnificent (if, dare I say, slightly too loud) job with the music, which sometimes plays with the vocals and sometimes works against them. There are periods, even whole songs, that owe something to Gershwin or Berlin, but there are also sequences which feel like the industrial clanging of early Kraftwerk or the music of Georgy Sviridov (indeed, Guy Maddin's short movie The Heart Of The World, for which Sviridov provides the music, has much in common with Adding Machine: A Musical in its aesthetic).

The actors don't have it easy either. Joseph Alessi plays Zero as a kind of middle-aged Travis Bickle, with plenty of Noo Yawk in his accent and his short-lived rebellion. As his on/off lover, Joanna Kirkland transforms spectacularly in the cathartic closing scenes and sings wonderfully, as do all the cast from bass to soprano, sometimes complementing the score, sometimes countering it. There's a splendidly dark comic turn from Edd Campbell-Bird as a charming psychopath, underlining the fact that for all the trauma on display, this is really a black comedy that punches you in the stomach and you grimace through the smile.

At 95 minutes all-through, you need to concentrate on the action and think as much about its meaning as its narrative - definitely this is one for which a good night's sleep is recommended before trekking to Earl's Court. But the reward is a fascinating, unique experience that takes musical theatre as its format, but jumps off into spaces inhabited by other art forms in other periods. And, crucially for me, unlike some recherché works one occasionally sees on the London fringe, it is entirely free of self-indulgence.

Adding Machine: A Musical continues at the Finborough Theatre until 22 October

Read composer Joshua Schmidt's blog

Photo credit: Alex Brenner