By Leonard Jacobs

When did esoteric become the new black? To judge by the New York critics’ reaction to The Adding Machine, the musical version of Elmer Rice’s 1923 play, this is shattering, revolutionary, groundbreaking theater. To me, it’s the Theater of Asparagus.

As in the Rice play, The Adding Machine follows Mr. Zero (Joel Hatch), a corporate drone who has mindlessly added numbers at his job for 25 years. One day, his Boss (Jeff Still) informs him that a mechanical adding machine has rendered his work obsolete. Having already endured years of harangues from his harridan of a wife (the marvelously annoying Cyrilla Baer), Mr. Zero loses it—he kills his boss.

Director David Cromer’s often visually arresting production (dimly lit by Keith Parham) syncs up cleverly to the ways by which composer Joshua Schmidt and librettist Jason Loewith musicalize Rice’s play. For example, Mrs. Zero sings her kvetchy opening aria to Mr. Zero, “Something to Be Proud Of,” in bed; Cromer stages it as if we’re peeking through a camera hung from the ceiling of their bedroom, making it easy to see Mrs. Zero as one to be laughed at and loathed. For “Zero’s Confession,” in which Mr. Zero justifies his actions, Cromer situates the hatchet-faced Hatch in a swirling no man’s land of tortured self-reprobation. These segments come fairly early in the piece and are riveting in theatrical intensity. In terms of pure music, however, they are also repetitive and unrelentingly dissonant. That’s Theater of Asparagus—not to everyone’s taste.

Mr. Zero has always had a soft spot for Daisy (Amy Warren), who’s toiled beside him for years at the office and reciprocates his affection. Despite the alienating effect of the two aforementioned arias, the song Schmidt and Loewith have given Daisy, “I’d Rather Watch You,” is arguably the finest Gershwin pastiche since Stephen Sondheim wrote “Losing My Mind” for the musical Follies—it’s jarring to hear something so gorgeously melodic after so much harshness and noise. Twirling a parasol, doing a little dance, Warren is more than The Adding Machine’s serio-comic life force. She’s an actress of such intrinsic pathos you want to beg Mr. Zero to declare his love for her at once.

It isn’t a long wait. After Mr. Zero’s execution for his crime, The Adding Machine segues into the fantastical as he arrives in the Elysian Fields—and is soon met by Daisy, who has committed suicide. Amidst the green idyll of Takeshi Kata’s whimsical set, Mr. Zero is given a last shot at romance with Daisy before their souls are recycled. Yes, that’s right: Death is no escape from the dreariness of living. Rice’s tragic vision, honored by Schmidt, Loewith and Cromer, suggests that all humans are created simply so, following death, they may be re-created again on earth for another lifelong shift in the corporate gulag.

Or, as I said before: Theater of Asparagus.

I did feel sympathy for the six people who left the performance I attended. Partly, let’s blame Rice’s pedantic tone, which the authors often preserve. Partly, let’s blame Schmidt and Loewith, who demonstrate a level of literary and harmonic sophistication that exceeds those of many in the audience. And that’s why I can at least appreciate the critics’ praise for the show. For so long they have complained that musical theater is all about lowest-common-denominator pandering, and The Adding Machine resists that at all costs. For me, Theater of Asparagus, especially served a bit steaming, can be tasty. But I know it won’t satisfy all appetites.

Open run. Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane (betw. MacDougal St. & 6th Ave.). 212-420-8000; 212-307-4100; $65.