Do you ever feel stuck on the hamster wheel of life? What would you be willing to do to set yourself free? Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 classic explores cultural expectations for women through the eyes of a young woman who’s stifled by her life. This production, directed by Michelle Soicher, features exceptional design, and fantastic performances of this unique and intricate text. Machinal is a production you won’t want to miss this fall.

It’s easy to see how Machinal has earned a place on several must-see and must-read theatre lists. The story is revolutionary for its time, and is told in such a poetic and stylized manner that it grabs a hold of you from the beginning and doesn’t let you go until the bitter end. Machinal is about a young woman who doesn’t like her job, particularly because she’s been getting special attention from her boss. She still lives with her nagging mother and is her mother’s sole support financially. The young woman marries her boss, ensuring she’ll never have to work another day in her life, but it makes her wildly miserable. One night, she meets a man whom she falls deeply and madly in love with. Changing the trajectory of her life, the young woman goes to extreme measures to free herself from her husband’s grasp, while ultimately suffering the most dire of consequences. 

How this play was written has been seamlessly integrated into the design, so it feels appropriate to talk about the two in tandem. The set is a grey monolith creating the back wall of a room, with several boxes, a shelf, and various set decorations to transform it into the various locales the play requires. The initial scenes see everyone dressed in combinations of grey, white, and black; emblematic of the monotony of the young woman’s life. What’s even better is that the whole cast speaks to a rhythm: they carry out their jobs to a metronome, the back and forth and tick-tock of their words cements the sameness and routine of their lives. Even when the young woman goes home to her mother the staccato dialogue and drab colour scheme persists. It’s only when she meets her lover that suddenly the young woman is wearing a pale blue ensemble and the room where they have their affair is draped in beautiful white curtains. The colour he’s brought into her life stays just barely visible as her red slip underneath her black and grey clothing. Carlyn Rahusaar-Routledge has done an incredible job at making the small space at the Red Sandcastle Theatre work impeccably for this story; able to transform into several locations while maintaining this monochromatic feel throughout. 

Azaria Shams stars as the young woman and I cannot stress enough what an absolute star she is. I’ve seen her dazzle in musicals, but her chops as a dramatic actress are equally impressive. This is a tough role with tons of text, all spoken to different timing depending of what setting the character is in, and she delivers it with grace. Opposite her as her overbearing husband and boss is Joseph Brown, who brings the perfect amount of cringe and discomfort to his role. Theodore McClennan, Judah Parris, Sandy Ramdin, and Aurora McClennan make up the rest of the office, as well as various other roles. The office scene is such a stand out because of the meter and pacing of the piece which they all kept up fabulously. Parris’ exclamations of “Hot Dog!” and Aurora McClennan’s flirtatious phone conversations are particular favourites, while Theodore McClennan made a great DA and Ramdin’s sympathetic journalist were equally entertaining. Ophilia Davis plays the young woman’s mother, as well as the judge, which I felt is a very smart and telling pairing. Matthew Nadeau plays the young woman’s lover, and he is absolutely the “bad boy with a good heart” kind of guy who would attract such a naive and unhappy woman. 

This cast needs to also be commended for how they handled all of the scene transitions throughout this play. They were in charge of quite a bit of setting up and taking down during the scene changes, yet they did so flawlessly, executing that bit of technical choreography just as well as they did their roles. 

In a way, it’s unfortunate that Machinal is as timely and necessary as it was in 1928; there’s much which has drastically changed in that time, yet this show is proof that it’s not as much as we’d like to think. Machinal speaks to the desire in all of us to find happiness and freedom in our lives, no matter the cost. 

Machinal runs at the Red Sandcastle Theatre until November 24. For more information and tickets, visit: https://www.theflareproductions.com/machinal

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Cover photo: Azaria Shams and Joseph Brown. Photo by Alex Andrea.

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