Review: The Machine Stops at Theatre Works

Review by Greg Gorton

Briony Dunn’s adaptation of E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops is a visually compelling production with spectacular production design and powerful performances. The play presents the superficial trappings of the novella in a comfortable space where most will be entertained, though not as challenged as they would be if they read the novella.

Niklas Pajanti’s set design for The Machine Stops captures the dystopian science fiction scenario with a sleek industrial look that also provides practical avenues for actors to use the space. Sixteen pipes hang from the ceiling in rows of four, each failing to meet the fall from only a foot. They are sidelit from both ends of the stage, and shine at us like a forest of metal. 

Between them moves Mary Helen Sassman, playing the protagonist Vashti, a middle-aged woman who is both terrified and determined to fulfil her role as a resident of The Machine. The Machine is her apartment building, her life support system, the infrastructure that provides and governs every part of her life. Sassman’s portrayal of Vashti is one that immediately demands empathy - she shivers with fear and we tighten in our seats, she stands tall and proud and we want to praise her strength. 

As the play progresses, Sassman’s character becomes a zealot with such ease that the change does not jar us in any way. This zealotry is an obvious and unavoidable path for the character we are offered, and the actor portrays it perfectly.

The only other actor to grace the stage is Patrick Livesey as the woman’s son, Kuno. An impetuous young man who wants to know the world outside the machine at any cost, he begs his mother to visit. In the second act, Livesey is faced with a monologue ripped directly from the pages of the novella. While lesser actors would struggle to present this work as anything more than a moved reading of a book, Livesey brings this story to light as a character telling a truth. That Forster is a brilliant prose writer helps, of course.

The sound design, by Darrin Verhagen, is a character unto itself. The constant hum of the machine, integral to the original text, sits below a score that fills gaps, overcomes characters, and highlights the fears, hopes, and crushing defeats of the characters within it. There is an ironic sadness that its most important role is hampered by the venue’s own machine-hum, but for me this irony is part of why this adaptation is so important.

The struggles I face with The Machine Stops may partly stem from my own recent reading of the novella, though I’m unconvinced that a virginal audience would experience no challenges of their own.

While I greatly applaud Briony Dunn’s opening scene, uncomfortably slow, it also sets the town as the machine as enemy to Vashti, and Vashti a woman who has given in to its demands. This is in stark contrast to the text, in which (like many dystopian works of that age) the character first believes they are in a utopia. In Forster’s work, Vashti is already a zealot, and approaches her son not in fear for him but in disappointment. I feel that this directorial change strips the text of so much that it relates to today - the experiences we all faced during lockdown, the current effects of social media, the comfort of being privileged in a post-industrial world, the enjoyment that can be experienced by blocking your ears and staying in your lane. 

On the other hand, if I had no previous experience, I fear I would be lost as to why Vashti was suddenly pregnant, just what her prior relationship with her son consisted of, or exactly how she felt about the rest of society. I believe I would walk out of the theatre having enjoyed this play immensely as a thriller but not feeling the entire weight of the challenges it presents - challenges to the capitalistic industrial world we live in today, and the challenge against how our privilege (for all who could afford this show have privilege) makes us complicit in this world.

The Machine Stops is a beautiful play with brilliant actors and designs that capture a future dystopia in innovative ways. It is a thriller that draws us into the characters and their plight, and leaves us enjoying it for the escapism Dunn has produced. It doesn’t challenge us like the original text, and misses so many opportunities to do so, but perhaps that is okay. Perhaps in a world like ours, we need happy endings of failing machines, and less challenges which blame us for its original creation.

Image Supplied