After writing four more plays of no special distinction, Rice startled audiences in 1923 with his next contribution to the theatre, the boldly expressionistic "The Adding Machine", which he wrote in 17 days. A satire about the growing regimentation of life in the machine age, the play tells the story the life, death and bizarre afterlife of a dull bookkeeper, Mr. Zero. When Mr. Zero, a mere cog in the corporate machine, discovers that he is to be replaced at work by an adding machine, he snaps and murders his boss. After his trial and execution, he enters the next life only to confront some of the same issues and, judged to be of minimal use in heaven, is sent back to Earth for recycling. Theatre critic Brooks Atkinson called it "the most original and brilliant play any American had written up to that time ... the harshest and most illuminating play about modern society had ever seen." Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott were enthusiastic. Other reviewers spoke of him, hyperbolically, as a writer who might become America's Ibsen. Directed with great ingenuity by Philip Moeller, designed by Lee Simonson, and produced by the Theatre Guild, the play starred Dudley Digges and Edward G. Robinson, then at the start of his acting career. Ironically, it made its author no money at all. (Adapted as an innovatively staged musical in 2007, "The Adding Machine" enjoyed a successful Off-Broadway run in 2008.)