I recently watched a fine production of Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 play ‘Machinal.’ (The Old Vic Theatre, London until 1 June.)

‘Machinal’ tells the tale of a young female stenographer who feels out of place in modern society. It is related in nine short scenes, and the dialogue is repetitious, crisp and jagged, suggesting the harsh rhythms of the city and office life.

Adding Clerk: 2490, 28, 76, 123, 36842, 1, ¼, 37, 804, 23, ½, 982.
Filing Clerk: Accounts – A. Bonds – B. Contracts - C. Data – D. Earnings – E.
Stenographer: Dear Sir – in re – your letter – recent date – will state –
Telephone Girl: Hello – Hello – George H Jones Company good morning – hello hello – George H Jones Company good morning – hello.

The Young Woman (she is not given a name) is of a nervous disposition. She struggles with the precipitous pace and relentless pressure of day-to-day urban existence. She feels claustrophobic on the subway, and is frequently late for work.

Young Woman: I had to get out!
Adding Clerk: Out!
Filing Clerk: Out?
Stenographer: Out where?
Young Woman: In the air!
Stenographer: Air?
Young Woman: All those bodies pressing.
Filing Clerk: Hot dog!
Young Woman: I thought I would faint! I had to get out in the air!

The Young Woman has reached the end of her tether. But she receives little sympathy from her dependent, nagging mother.

Young Woman: I can’t go on like this much longer – going to work – coming home – going to work - coming home – I can’t - Sometimes in the subway I think I’m going to die – sometimes even in the office if something don’t happen – I got to do something – I don’t know – it’s like I’m tight inside.

Playwright and journalist Sophie Treadwell (c. 1925)

She decides to marry her boss as a means of escape, a route to some sort of security - despite not being the least bit attracted to him. He is a bald, thin man with flabby hands, who repeats the same crude jokes, claims to understand women, and tells her to relax. She flinches when he touches her.

Husband: I got a lot of ‘em up my sleeve yet – that’s part of what I owe my success to – my ability to spring a good story – You know – you got to learn to relax, little girl – haven’t you?...That’s one of the biggest things to learn in life. That’s part of what I owe my success to.

And so the Young Woman remains trapped - now in a tedious, unequal, loveless marriage.

Husband: Aren’t you listening?
Young Woman: I’m reading.
Husband: What you reading?
Young Woman: Nothing.
Young Woman: Must be something.

In time she gives birth to a child she feels no connection with. Her anxiety is amplified by her husband’s solipsism; by his constant encouragement to ‘pull herself together.’

Husband: Now see here, my dear, you’ve got to brace up, you know! And - and face things! That’s what makes the world go round. I know all you’ve been through but… But you’ve got to brace up now! Make an effort! Pull yourself together! Start the uphill climb!...Will power! That’s what conquers! Look at me!

The Young Woman finds herself on a path to an affair with a man she meets in a bar, and from there to a plan to murder her husband.

‘Machinal’ is a compellingly tragic tale of someone confined to a world to which she doesn’t belong; to a society with which she shares no values; to a hierarchy in which she is powerless. There is a sense that her downfall is inevitable. The French word ‘machinal’ means mechanical or automatic.

Young Woman: Leave me alone! Oh my god am I never to be let alone! Always to have to submit – to submit!

Sophie Treadwell was born in 1885 and raised in California. Despite suffering mental health problems, she had a successful career as a journalist - writing an undercover series on homeless women, gaining an exclusive interview with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, covering the First World War in Europe. Often inspired to pen plays by her experiences as a reporter, she wrote ‘Machinal’ after attending the sensational 1927 trial of Ruth Snyder - a woman who murdered her husband with the help of her travelling salesman lover.

In her preface to the play, Treadwell explains that the lead in her story is ‘an ordinary woman, any woman.’

‘The woman is essentially soft, tender, and the life around her is essentially hard, mechanised. Business, home, marriage, having a child, seeking pleasure – all are difficult for her – mechanical, nerve nagging.’

We no longer live in a world of stenographers and adding clerks. And thankfully modern work culture is more fluid and flexible; more casual and informal; more sensitive to individuality and mental health.

Nonetheless the anxiety, claustrophobia and impotence at the heart of ‘Machinal’ may be painfully familiar to us.

We still expect complex, sensitive, messy human beings to work within rigid, relentless, rational systems. We create a pressure to conform, to fit in, to toe the line.

And this leads to an inevitable dissonance - which may be all the more jarring in the creative industries, where we need ‘soft’ people to invent emotionally compelling ideas.

It is worth being reminded: beware of placing soft people in hard places.

Adding Clerk: She doesn’t belong in an office.
Telephone Girl: Who does?

'And I have this dream where I'm screaming underwater,
While my friends are waving from the shore.
And I don't need you to tell me what that means,
I don't believe in that stuff anymore.
Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time,
And that's just how I feel.
Always have and I always will.
I always have and always will.’

Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Funeral'

No. 468