Elmer Rice’s expressionistic masterpiece about a man who loses his job to a machine gets re-imagined as a musical by Jason Loewith and Joshua Schmidt. With jangling, percussive music reflecting period influences – including early-20th-century modernists, Tin Pan Alley and gospel – the work conjures a vision of American life in the 1920s at odds with that decade’s popular image as a happy-go-lucky era ended only by the Depression. It is a vision that feels eerily in tune with our own unsettled economy. Adding Machine: A Musical plays to Nov. 1. Studio Theatre, 14th & P Sts. NW. Tickets are $57 to $71. Call 202-332-3300 or visit www.studiotheatre.org.