Review - Adding Machine and Artf*ckers

February of 2008 has turned out to be a heck of a terrific month for non-traditional and daring Off-Broadway musicals. (Do we have any more opening by tomorrow night?) Following the exhilarating Next To Normal and the entrancingly Dadaist The Blue Flower we now have Joshua Schmidt (music and libretto) and Jason Loewith's (libretto) haunting chamber piece, Adding Machine, based on Elmer Rice's 1923 Expressionist drama. To call it "old-fashioned" would be misleading, but one of the pleasures of Adding Machine is that it recalls a time when political and social protest musicals were not uncommon among Gotham's theatrical offerings.

Staying faithful to the source material, Adding Machine opens in the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Zero (Joel Hatch and Cyrilla Baer). The tired hubby is at sixes and sevens trying to get some shut-eye while his gossipy wife keeps yapping about the Eights and Nines. Their marriage and his job adding figures for a department store are both approaching the quarter-century point and though he's not especially excited about either of them, he's at least expecting a raise at work. But when told that he's being pink slipped because it's cheaper for the company to replace him with an Adding Machine, he kills the boss, gets executed for murder (Very swift justice they have in Expressionistland.) and finds himself in Elysian Fields, where he runs into co-worker Daisy (Amy Warren), who has been secretly in love with him and committed suicide so they can spend their afterlife together. After that it gets weird.

Schmidt's back-alley legit music, grimly anti-melodic with hints of jazz, dramatic counterpoint, and a jarring burst of pop spiritual, effectively contrasts with the simple uncomplicated working-class characters. Though the three major players have impressive voices, they sing with heavy blue-collar accents and often give the impression that their characters are reaching for notes just beyond their capabilities, giving the music a beautiful unattractiveness. This works especially well in a prison scene where Mrs. Zero brings her husband his favorite food for his last meal and, upon seeing the plateful, Hatch bellows out a rapturous, vibrato-less, "Ham and Eggs!"

The mood of director David Cromer's production captures the right mix of gloom and absurdity, with the visuals of Takeshi Kata (set), Kristine Knanishu (costumes) and Keith Parham (lights) being reminiscent of German silent films of the period. There are excellent performances throughout the cast. Though Mr. Zero is more sympathetic as a symbol of the unappreciated everyman than as a person, Joel Hatch has a warm pathos, as does Amy Warren as his love-sick colleague. Cyrilla Baer's Mrs. Zero is very amusing and Joe Farrell is intensely idealistic as prison-mate Shrdlu. The supporting players (Jeff Still, Adinah Alexander, Niffer Clarke, Roger E. DeWitt and Daniel Marcus.) and off-stage musicians (Andy Boroson and Timothy Splain at duo pianos with Brad "Gorilla" Carsons on percussion under the music direction of J. O'Conner Navarro) all make fine contributions.

Photo by Carol Rosegg: Joel Hatch and Cyrilla Baer

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"This piece, it sucks. My friends, they suck. My girl, she sucks. But when everything around you sucks, how do you know it isn't you?"

That's about as deep as Michael Domitrovich's Artfuckers gets.

His idea to write about the children of the most successful 1980s Manhattan artists and fashion designers who are born with money, connections and perhaps inherited talent, and the added pressure they feel to prove that their success comes from what they do rather than who they are, is a good one. But the play is far too shallow to deliver the goods. It might work as satire, since the excessively stereotyped characters are so laughably self-centered and stupid, but director Eduardo Machado's production is unfortunately, quite earnest in its intention to shock and titillate.

The fellow contemplating suckiness is Owen (Will Janowitz), a sculptor who is feeling the effects of severe depression brought on by some constructive criticism of his work in Artforum. His friends are very concerned about his condition because he's supposed to build the runway for an upcoming fashion show they're all involved with. There's designer Max (Tuomas Hiltunen), who prostitutes himself for fabulous fabric, Trevor (Asher Grodman), a really intense DJ slash composer ("If you heard the throbbing in my brain, in my ears, you'd know it needs to get out."), Maggie (Jessica Kaye), who's in public relations ("Even our bowel movements have artistic merit.") and her designer slash model sister Bella (Nicole LaLiberte), who, when asked her opinion of a woman's right to choose, proclaims, "I believe it applies to clothes, men and unwanted fetuses."

Two uncredited actors who appear as video projections spreading bad buzz about Owen actually give the most nuanced performances of the night. The live foursome are so one-note that even the nudity and sex scenes are dull, including the one that ends with Maggie wiping herself clean after Owen's premature ejaculation.

Is this what "edgy" has come to?

Photo by Carol Rosegg: Nicole LaLiberte, Asher Grodman, and Will Janowitz