The Machine Stops heading to York and Newcastle

FOLLOWING its world premiere run at York Theatre Royal in May, Pilot Theatre and York Theatre Royal are taking this co-production of Neil Duffield’s exciting stage adaptation of EM Forster’s The Machine Stops on a UK next year.

The production will start its national tour at York Theatre Royal from February 10 to 18 Feb and includes Newcastle's Northern Stage on March 30.

Directed by York Theatre Royal’s Associate director Juliet Forster, Duffield’s work looks at a chilling short story exploring our increasingly intricate and complex relationship with technology. In a dystopian world where humans have retreated far underground, Kuno alone questions their now total dependency on technology to live and communicate with each other, but in his struggle to break out can he reach the Earth’s surface before the Machine stops?

British novelist, essayist, and social and literary critic EM Forster created the exquisite novels A Passage to India and Howard’s End, which were both made into Oscar-winning films, but his short story masterpiece, published in 1909, is astoundingly prophetic and poignant in 2016, provided a chilling warning of the dangers of isolation, reliance on computer technology and the effects upon society.

The production features a specially composed soundtrack by John Foxx and Benge. Foxx is best-known as the original lead singer of the group Ultravox and as an electronic music pioneer.

The original soundtrack to the production forms much of the music on the new John Foxx And The Maths album, The Machine, which is due out on February10, via Metamatic Records. Foxx and Benge (his partner in The Maths) originally came up with a rich, atmospheric set of ideas for the 2016 production, created entirely on old analogue synthesisers and drum machines.

Viv Hardwick