Machinal

📝Sophie Treadwell
📍Old Vic, London
🗓March 2024.

Director: Richard Jones
Set Designer: Hyemi Shin
Costume Designer: Nicky Gillibrand
Lighting Designer: Adam Silverman
Movement Director: Sarah Fahie

_{“Five time Olivier Award winning director Richard Jones brings Sophie Treadwell’s extraordinary epic masterpiece, based on the true story of the committal and execution of Ruth Snyder, to the intimate surrounding of the Ustinov Studio.

This provocative drama of the 1920s offers one of the greatest female roles in theatre – challenging, powerful, emotive and poignant – which has been portrayed by many renowned actresses of the British stage.

Machinal is based on a fascinating true story uncovered by Sophie Treadwell while working as a journalist in America between the wars. Among her assignments was the sensational case involving Ruth Snyder, who with her lover Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and been sent to the electric chair.“}

“The jarring soundscape of the play is central to its sense of alarm, and scenes here are overlain effectively with invasive sounds (designed by Benjamin Grant).”
Arifa Akbar, The Guardian

“The rhythm of Benjamin Grant’s tremendous soundscape is repetitive, disruptive and discordant, reflecting Young Woman’s unhappy state of mind and strong themes of capitalism, gender and social inequality raised in the play.”
Cheryl Markosky, BroadwayWorld

“Sound designer Benjamin Grant provides a soundscape of intrusive ambient noise that bleeds through cracked windows and thin walls. The grating racket of crying babies, arguing neighbours and a relentless pneumatic drill become instruments in a cacophonous score filled with jagged strings, dolorous brass drones and nerve-shredding squeals.”

Dave Fargnoli, The Stage