Review: MACHINAL, Old Vic Theatre
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan
In 1928, Ruth Snyder, mother to a young child Lorraine, only daughter to her mother, wife of Albert Snyder and lover of Judd Gray, was sent to the electric chair, becoming the third woman in the state of New York to be executed at Sing Sing prison. Her story caught the attention of a nation at the time and the highly publicised trial became the event of the year.
Ruth was a working class woman who found herself married to a man who, although could provide for her, subjected her to physical and emotional abuse. Unable to take control of her own life, she found herself in the arms of Gray who gave her a sense of freedom. It was here that, to regain her life, the lovers devised a plan to murder her husband. After surviving a reported seven murder attempts, the pair finally succeeded by staging a robbery, strangling Albert and stuffing a chloroform soaked rag in his mouth. However, inconsistencies in their alibi and uncovered evidence were their demise. At the trial, the lovers turned on each other and were both found guilty.
At the trial was journalist and playwright Sophie Treadwell, instead of reporting the facts, she chose to write a play about the events. What she created was a story about the expectation of woman and how one was pushed to breaking point.
Machinal is not a retelling of Ruth’s life but uses it as source material. Instead, the lead character is a woman forced by social pressure to marry a much older husband who makes her flinch at every touch. She longs for a freedom she feels she has been denied and so attempts to take her freedom into her own hands.
Considering when it was written, Treadwell was, in many ways, ahead of her time challenging the patriarchal systems that have and still restrict the choices women can make for their own lives and about their body. Her writing resonates within the urgency many of us feel about this autonomy being taken away today and the justified anger that comes from it. But how far should anger be allowed to go? In Machinal, it is taken to the extreme. Violence and murder is not endorsed as the right decision, more so explored as what drives a woman to the edge and then to jump off.
The production, which has transferred from Theatre Royal Bath to The Old Vic, comes at its audience with force and commitment from the company led by director Richard Jones. The lead role of the unfortunate young woman is held by Rosie Sheehy who embodies her with conviction, conveying the pain and torture of the character’s life from start to finish. It is a mammoth undertaking that Sheehy puts everything she has into.
The set design from Hyemi Shin adds to the uncomfortable nature of the plot by juxtaposing a bright yellow claustrophobic set to the bleakness of the character’s reality, while the lighting by Adam Silverman shifts us into moments of refuge from the overwhelming imposition of the setting to allow more intimate moments to land.
Costuming from Nicky Gillibrand is inconsistent unfortunately but where it works, visually it takes the audience into the 1920’s as does movement by Sarah Fahie, which is created through the ensemble moments. They utilise a percussive convention to shift from scene to scene and highlight the absurdity of the time and the place of a woman in society largely successfully.
Despite the work being well constructed, there is, however, a sense of life missing. Transitions are sometimes clunky and relies on its established physical conventions that do not always serve the story. The staccato rhythm of the text does feel intentional and it is clear that its unsettling nature is a choice but it does not always land, resulting with each scene feeling slightly too long. The choice to have so much physicality is interesting but it does feel like the work is somewhat miscast for it to be fully realised and embodied by the ensemble.
Sheehy’s performance is, as mentioned, mammoth and it is worth witnessing her portrayal. However, the journey she takes starts at such a heightened place that it diffuses the state she must reach later on, although she does everything she can to get it there.
Jones has worked largely in opera in recent times and this influence can be seen in the work. The melodrama and sheer tension expressed by the protagonist could easily find a reworking in this way, but this was not quite the time for it.
This is an unbelievable story written by a woman from a time when her challenging provocation may not have been fully welcomed. Go and see this latest adaptation of her words, if, for nothing else, to see where the words land today.
*** Three stars
Reviewed by: Stephanie Osztreicher
Machinal plays at the Old Vic Theatre until 1 June, with further information here.