Adding Machine (musical)

Adding Machine
World Premiere Recording
Music	Joshua Schmidt
Lyrics	Jason Loewith Joshua Schmidt
Book	Jason Loewith Joshua Schmidt
Basis	Play The Adding Machine by Elmer Rice
Productions	2007 Illinois 2008 Off-Broadway 2009 Washington D.C. 2010 Boston 2011 Los Angeles 2011 Vancouver (Canadian Premiere)

Adding Machine is a musical adaptation of Elmer Rice's 1923 play The Adding Machine, with music by Joshua Schmidt, and book and lyrics by Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt. The show opened in 2007 in Illinois before moving Off-Broadway in 2008. The show was nominated for numerous Lucille Lortel and Drama Desk awards.

Adding Machine is a musical adaptation of Elmer Rice's 1923 play The Adding Machine. The original play has been called the "gimlet-eyed Expressionist classic about the soul rot of conventionality;" it relates the story of an "antihero," Mr. Zero, who murders his boss after he has been replaced by an adding machine after 25 years on the job. Loewith conceived a musical adaptation after learning of the Kurt Weill musical based on a second Rice play Street Scene. After some years, Loewith was able to attract composer Joshua Schmidt to the project; Schmidt composed the music, and wrote the libretto and book together with Loewith. Schmidt met Loewith because he was the artistic director of company at Next Theater. Schmidt explained why his show had such a small band: "At Next Theater, we had a 15-by-5 space for the orchestra — a shoebox with a very low ceiling. My experience had taught me how to get a lot out of a little. I approached it with this combination in mind from the moment of conception. I didn’t cut it back to make it fit our space. I created a full blown, challenging score for three instruments. It’s not a matter of compensating for instruments that aren’t there."

The musical premiered in 2007 at the Next Theater in Illinois in a production directed by David Cromer and starring Joel Hatch, Cyrilla Baer, and Amy Warren. The Chicago production was recognized with a Jeff Award for best musical.

It opened Off Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre on February 25, 2008; it was again directed by David Cromer, with many of the original cast members. The New York-based critic Adam Feldman reviewed the musical enthusiastically, noting that "Schmidt and Loewith’s adaptation cleaves to the bones of Rice’s play but also fleshes it out in a superbly varied score" and "Adding Machine does what Zero literally cannot imagine: It alchemizes mediocrity into excellence." The production received six Lucille Lortel Award nominations, more than any other show in the 2008 season, and won for Outstanding Musical (among others).