Obsoletely Fabulous

Theaters, like people, can do good acts--and we don’t mean two-acts. The Grove Theater Center is doing a good act with its revival at the Gem Theater of the unconscionably seldom-seen “The Adding Machine,” by Elmer Rice.

People, unlike theaters, can do evil acts, and “The Adding Machine” examines the conditions and aftermath of the nasty actions of Mr. Zero (David Allen Jones), who slaves away as a human calculator for 25 years and then kills his boss when he’s the victim of corporate downsizing. Zero goes to his grave, but he doesn’t go to hell--or heaven. If the unexamined life isn’t worth living, then at least Zero examines his after he dies.

The play also studies the notion of Martian men and Venusian women, technological displacement of workers, movies, capital punishment, sexual harassment--and, oh, did we mention that Rice wrote this play in 1923? Decried and praised in its day as a radical work of Expressionism, “The Adding Machine” can now be viewed in a context, as a precursor of the Theater of the Absurd and the epic, archetypal American dramas that followed, leading up to “Angels in America.”

Director Kevin Cochran’s generally fluid and sensitive staging makes the argument that we’ve ignored the play far too long, like Zero’s been ignoring his life problems far too long. He’s the dutiful Worker Unit; Cochran’s set imagines Zero wielding a giant fountain pen as he scribbles figures while his assistant, Sonja Alarr’s Daisy Diana Dorothea Devore, calls out the figures from a towering stack of paper. He’s also the Dutiful Husband--silently dumb in the face of Mrs. Zero’s (Denise Moses) endless nagging and chattering, or when she brings her friends over for a mindless party of more chatter.

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Though Zero does murder, it’s also true that he’s in a swamp of badness. Mrs. Zero’s party pals want all immigrants booted out and all “darkies” killed and then launch into the national anthem. The company, riding an economic boom not unlike our current one, is an adding machine in which humans are reduced to symbols. The form and the content of Rice’s domestic-political comedy are one and the same, while remaining amazingly vital.

The best, bitterest joke Rice foists on us is that Zero’s true hell is on Earth, both as a numbers cruncher and in prison, where he’s treated as a specimen at the zoo. Things are relatively OK after he’s dead: He makes a new friend in Shrdlu (David Reynolds), and he goes to a pleasure park and reunites with Daisy, who’s here after her own suicide. As his name implies, Zero is ultimately clueless, for he rejects Daisy’s love offers and a sylvan place where artists work and enjoy themselves and leaves for a purgatory of . . . more numbers crunching.

It’s here that we suspect Rice is too harsh on his Zero hero, who’s yanked off his adding machine amid a giant sea of calculator paper (we do hope the Grove people recycle) and sent back to Earth, an old soul in a new body. This is reincarnation not as betterment, but as a treadmill.

Cochran’s directorial and design attitude is appropriately cool and removed, while David Darwin’s lights and David Ortega’s music provide striking Expressionist colors. Jones perfectly pitches his Zero character at neutral speed, always a bit befuddled at everything swirling around him, painfully aware of his own mediocrity.

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Reynolds plays another variation on Zero, but hulking, more haunted and hopeless, and comic at a much lower key than most of the cast. Moses, for example, takes Mrs. Zero’s nagging perhaps too far, so that our ears soon turn off to her verbal spew. Alarr enjoyably goes from worker gray to immortal blond, exactly as Rice intends. And Rice’s overall caustic, ironic intentions are painfully clear in a revival worthy of the name.

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* “The Adding Machine,” Gem Theater, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. Thursday-Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 6 p.m. Ends Feb. 22. $16.50-$22.50. (714) 741-9550. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

Mr. Zero: David Allen Jones

Mrs. Zero: Denise Moses

Daisy: Sonja Alarr

Shrdlu: David Reynolds

The Boss/Mr. One/Joe: Peter Welkin

Mrs. One/Guide/Lt. Charles: Susan E. Taylor

Mrs. Three/Eunice: Dawn Michelle Mancarella

Mr. Three/The Fixer: Christopher Sullivan

Mr. Two/Country Boy/Executioner/

Head/Young Man: Paul Hasenyager

Mrs. Two/Judy/Young Woman: Sierra Parks

A Grove Theater Center production of Elmer Rice’s play. Directed by Kevin Cochran. Set: Cochran. Lights: David Darwin. Costumes: Don Nelson. Sound and music: David Ortega.