This one-woman play underlines the Machinist’s aloneness. Dominated by the sewing machine emphasises an inescapable pressure, compounded by audible even if unseen pressures of children playing ‘on top of her head’ and a policeman whose language she doesn’t understand.  

And she is an immigrant. She misunderstands the language, the culture and authority. She views her elderly English neighbour’s affection for her cat and for wearing pastel coloured dresses as improper. The policeman knocking at her door, talking about the RSPCA utterly confounds her. It would never occur to her that boys’ chasing a chicken around the garden would bring down the law upon her.

Her final desperate gesture to reassure the policeman that she is no way intending ill-treating the chicken because she is going to make chicken soup with it for her husband in hospital, is both absurd and wrought with painful misunderstanding.