Machinal is joyless and pointless

When I was a much younger critic, there was a certain kind of play that, while worthy, pretentious and mind-numbingly boring, I would I go out of my way to praise, even if I had to write the review with my eyelids prised open with matchsticks, because I thought it would make me look awfully clever.

Richard Jones’s revival of Sophie Treadwell’s bleak and nihilistic 1928 work Machinal about a woman driven mad on the treadmill of life would certainly have fallen into this category. I’d have raved about Hyemi Shin’s German expressionist set design and the manic intensity of Rosie Sheehy’s central performance. I’d have lauded, too, Jones for directing such joyless fare with such single-minded determination.

Of course these days I try to think, too, of audiences and whether a show is actually worth their time and not inconsiderable investment, and that’s where, in all honesty, Machinal just doesn’t quite cut it. As accomplished an actress as Sheehy is, I never found myself caring at all about her. Tim Frances, too, as her bovine husband seems such a comedy villain that I wasn’t even remotely surprised that she eventually bumped him off.

All there is really to admire is an endless succession of visually striking but ultimately rather vacuous set pieces and a general evocation of claustrophobia. It’s all very voguish, but not at all involving.

Every now and again an actor would come on to the stage and place the name of the next scene up in big letters – Business, Domestic etc – and, even though it’s a relatively short show stretching to barely two hours, I found myself yearning to read The End.

My advice is to tell your more pretentious friends you saw it and absolutely adored it, but don’t put yourself through the ordeal of actually going.

At the Old Vic, London, until June 1