Machinal

Last night my theatre group went to an interesting play. Machinal was performed by the theatre studies students at Acadia University in the nearby town of Wolfville. We agreed that it was a very gutsy performance from a group of young people. The understanding and maturity they brought to the play was nothing short of amazing and speaks well of the director and the English department at Acadia.

In a nutshell, Machinal by Sophie Treadwell is a play about a young woman who murders her husband and is sentenced to death in the electric chair. It is set in the late 1920's or early 1930's. Apparently, although a work of fiction, it was inspired by the real life events surrounding Ruth Snyder who was tried for murder and executed in this manner in the United States in 1928. Snyder had a lover who helped her commit the crime in order to get insurance money. In Machinal, that's not the motivation. What then is it? Why does she kill her husband? Is she being abused and beaten like Farrrah Fawcett in the movie The Burning Bed? No, not in the slightest. Her husband, while not the most physically attractive man, is the owner of a successful company where she was once employed. Although he is not terribly "empathetic" ( a term bandied about loosely these days), he is not mean or vindictive or a bully. The young woman in the play finds a lover, and in a rather ironic twist, kills her sleeping husband with the vase holding pebbles that was a memento from her lover. Well, we might wonder, why didn't she just get a divorce? why such a drastic 'solution'? Is she emotionally unbalanced? is she a product of her age/the times? did she have a cold domineering mother? or is she selfish neurotic and cold-hearted? These are some of the avenues explored in the play and my group seemed to be quite sympathetic to the young woman. I don't think anyone felt she deserved "the chair"; however, the play left us with a feeling of ambivalence and a strange sense of disquiet.