Life > October 4, 2007

By Caitlin Kenney | Editor in chief

The scene opens on a dimly lit filing cabinet, a telephone switchboard, a typewriter and a cold iron door – as lifeless as the automatons that operate them. Machinal, Sophie Treadwell’s feminist expressionist play, opens on the stark setting of corporate America and the daily machinations of the robotic workers contrasted to the helpless longing of the play’s anti-heroine, Helen. The story follows the ordinary events of Helen’s life that ultimately lead her to kill her husband and face execution on the electric chair.

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Machinal, the dark University Theatre season opener, stars sophomore Maggie Choumbakos as the lead, Helen. (Sophie Mullinax/Old Gold & Black)

The subject matter of the play is heavy and shocking, but also provocative. Treadwell wrote Machinal after following several murder trials in the 1920s, including that of Ruth Snyder, a woman who conspired with her lover to kill her husband and was one of the first women executed in New York. Machinal is Snyder’s story, but it is also an amalgam, a story that could happen to any woman or any person.

The heart of the play lies on the capable shoulders of sophomore Maggie Choumbakos, who portrays Helen throughout her cold, loveless marriage, unwanted childbirth and awakening love affair that leads to the murder of her husband. The role is emotionally demanding, but Choumbakos proved able to handle the transition between psychological distress and light-hearted bouts of love with equal panache.

The play explores what could drive an ordinary woman to murder her husband, using the analogy of society as a machine that forces not just women, but people to act in ways that stifle and deaden.

With the exception of Helen and her lover, all the characters are meant to be robotic and dead inside. A prime example is Helen’s husband, George H. Jones, played by junior Dan Applegate, whose movements are sinister and maniacally mechanical. He plays a man who knows what he wants and expects to get it. His body language and gestures show that he doesn’t understand or consider his wife.

Another standout performance comes from Applegate’s foil in the play, Helen’s lover, played by senior Troy Pellom. Though his time onstage is short, Pellom offers the one note of hope in the play’s message, hinting that love and release from the machine are possible, if fleeting.

Treadwell’s drama is full of socio-political commentary, so that even the unnamed side characters show the machinations of society, often directed at the stifling of women’s rights. Though Machinal was written in the 1920s, most of the issues are applicable in our world today.

One scene in a speakeasy shows three couples discussing issues we still wrestle with today – a lover pressures his mistress to abort a baby she wants to keep; a man plies another man with alcohol to try to get him into bed; a husand hustles his mistress off to bed while casually tossing off comments about his wife and kids at home.

No facet of human experience seems untouched. Treadwell tackles religion, sexual politics, women’s roles, birth and death in the short, stark play.

“Life has been hell to me,” Helen says, and Treadwell’s message might be that life can be hell and that the societal machine never fails.

Don’t let this disturbing message keep you from seeing Machinal, showing at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 3-6 and at 2 p.m. Oct. 7 at the MainStage Theatre. The story may be heavy, but it’s worth your time and consideration.

Tickets are on sale at the University Box Office $5 for students and $12 for adults.