Theatre Works’ The Machine Stops – an adaptation of the 1909 novella of the same name by E.M. Forster – begins with a terrifying image: a slow-moving figure inching closer to us through towering tubes, their long shadows cutting sharp lines across the figure’s passive expression.

There’s a dull, menacing roar somewhere in the distance, like the brrr of a great computer modem heard as if from underwater.

Forster’s 115-year-old novella is a classic dystopia. We follow Vashti (Mary Helen Sassman), one of the few remaining humans living in “The Machine,” a complex of rooms beneath the earth’s surface. The world, or so they’ve been told, has become uninhabitable, toxic. In their bespoke chambers, the Machine takes care of their every need. It schedules their breathing, their sleep, even their thoughts.

Mary Helen Sassman and Patrick Livesey in The Machine Stops. Photo © Hannah Jennings

Writer and director Briony Dunn depicts this artificial life with the impressionistic style that made her 2022 adaptation of The Human Voice so arresting.

In a body-horror-like montage, Sassman stretches her face into a...