‘THE MACHINE STOPS’
Stage Play adapted by Briony Dunn from the short story by E.M. FORSTER.
Playing at TheatreWorks, St Kilda from 23rd – 30th August, 2025.
All fans of dystopian novels marvel at the predictions George Orwell made in his 1949 novel, ‘1984’ with many of the tech ideas proving to be true today.
E.M. Forster’s short sci fi story, ‘The Machine Stops’, from 1909, did the same thing way before Orwell did, and was then republished in 1928, translated into 10 languages and voted one of the best novellas up to 1965. During this time, the electric shaver, the television and landing on the moon all seemed sci fi to the masses.
In 2025, our modern-day debate heats up on whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) will destroy humanity and there are strong arguments on both sides, but there’s no denying AI systems that surpass human intelligence, or misalign with human values, could potentially lead to disaster.
Briony Dunn, Head of Writing/Directing and Stage Management at COLLARTS, has adapted Forster’s story for today’s stage, directed it, and co-designed the set for this Theatre Works production, along with Set Designers, Betty Auhi and Niklas Pajanti. Pajanti also designed the lighting, whick pulsates creatively, synchronising with the mood throughout the script, strikingly and is both ominous and futuristic.
The story is set in a world where humanity lives underground and relies on a giant machine to provide its needs. It predicts technologies similar to instant messaging and the internet. Forster pointed to the technology itself as the ultimate controlling force.
Both the set and the lighting are innovative and represent well the way the story would have played out in 1909 – or 1928 – and the way we may see an underground world today. The set imposes from the start, floor to ceiling metallic pillars – not quite to the floor – representing the control of the machine and symbolising its instant messaging, its regulatory power over its subjects, with its geometrical sequence on stage, columns lined in order, 4 x 4 presenting the boundaries humans live within, in a secular way. Only a single chair to the right breaks the sequence on stage.
We are introduced to a mother, Vashti, from the shadows backstage, moving slowly towards the light, which I felt could have been more powerful if done in much less time.
Mary Helen Sassman plays Vashti, Kuno’s mother, however they live on opposite sides of the world, both literally and emotionally.
Dunn’s play also realises this point drastically, focusing on the mother and the son, a juxtoposition without physical connection – at first.
Slick screen projections display grey communication between Vashti and Kuno, similar to our “Face-time”.
In Forster’s story, Vashti is content with her life, producing and endlessly discussing second-hand ‘ideas’ and using her work to avoid real in-person time with friends. Shades of social anxiety during Covid came to mind. Fascinatingly, this prediction from over a century ago has become true of some people today, who take clickbait and three-second sound bites from social media as their truth and real news.
In Briony Dunn’s stage play, Vashti is seen to contrast between happiness and habitual loyalty to the machine with a soul destroying, maniacal loneliness that Sassman portrays too well, almost as if she’s become part of the machine herself.
Kuno, played by Patrick Livesey, returns to his mother (and us) with the raw truth – quite refreshingly. Livesey’s performance had the energy of Richard Burton in Gielgud’s 1964 Hamlet, especially with his delivery of this soliloquy…
“We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyzed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.”
I look forward to seeing Livesey’s future performances.
A particularly clever scene when the machine finally stops and Vashti can no longer press buttons to satisfy her every need, shows Sassman’s Vashti spiraling desperately out of control.
Dunn’s ending is as Forster wrote and her adaptation is just as successful in providing a warning to humanity that its connection to the natural world is what truly matters.
To book tickets to The Machine Stops, please visit https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2025/the-machine-stops.
Photographer: Hannah Jennings
