Adding Machine review

Adding Machine Review - Broadway musical

The musical is about how some elderly man, without ambitious, found his resting place on work during 25 years in one place (O great Krishna! How sad and disgusting – stay in one stuffy place for a quarter of a century!) He kills his boss, because he dared to remove him (read – fire) and replace with the counting machine (calculator or cash register). If the play would have been played 25 years ago from this very moment, the man who works with a calculator could be the same fired for the computer with Excel invented, which handles all the figures, displays the formula and makes a lot of useful reporting.

The story of the emptiness of inner little world of a lonely man who has nothing but interesting work (for him – yes, but infinitely boring for others), his wife, with which he is at henpecked position and whom he cannot stand and the mystery of love, in the face of a girl from another department of his company. This story is about a very uninteresting man, which was able to be played in more or less interesting form (because it cannot be that this musical would last for 4 years being uninteresting. And who says the opposite is a highbrow fool, who have never did any single musical). This story about the everyday life and hopelessness. On crime and punishment that follows a flagrant violation of the norms of morality. And what can be, in terms of negative consequences, if you went too far and too quickly left your habitual area, as they say now, "comfort zone". In general, the "comfort zone" is the rightful concept and the philosophical thing to determine that you need to go beyond your little comfortable world in order to achieve success. But lately it used anywhere and it has become too popular concept. So this is not a concept anymore stating the compelled explosive activity due to the unusual working or living conditions in order to survive in unfamiliar environment and to intensify your brain activity at maximum. Now it has become a mockery of itself – when you use toothpaste in the morning with the taste of pine needles instead of the usual, with the taste of the sea breeze, telling people that you have radically changed your style of behavior now.

The moral of the play is not understood – because the main character, which is not only that the murderer and apostate, but also combines such unflattering human qualities, as compromise fullness, conformity, lack of desire, reluctance to change – is allowed after death to use one more chance to live a life on the Earth. But this chance should be given for something substantial, isn’t it? For example, for special merit or achievement, useful at least for some group of people or to the environment. And what did our anti-hero, except of a secret love in addition to murderous 25 years of his life before he committed an act of physical deprivation of life of the poor boss who sought to optimize his responsibility site? Nothing. Because the pursuit of excellence is unusual for such people. If his name was not familiar to his boss after a quarter century of work, perhaps this man was too pathetic to deserve even that. He stayed true Mr. Zero – because it is so true.
Last Update:April, 06th 2016