CROOKED CROSS To Have American Premiere At Mint Theater Company

Mint Theater Company has announced that Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross will have its American premiere. The play, written by Carson and based on her 1934 novel Crooked Cross — the title refers to the Swastika — premiered in the U.K. at the Birmingham Rep in 1935 and was staged in London in 1937 but never again. 

The Times called the play “enthralling” while commending the young author’s “temperate wisdom… Through it all she never preaches, or loses touch, through hate or prejudice, with the human beings she represents.”  

Jonathan Bank will direct. The cast and design team will be announced at a later date. This Off-Broadway engagement at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street) will begin September 20th for a limited run through November 1st. Opening Night is set for Thursday October 9th. Tickets from $39 are on sale now at minttheater.org.

Crooked Cross draws us into the story of the Klugers, a typical middle class Bavarian family, facing the economic and political upheaval of Germany between Christmas 1932 and June 1933. At its heart is a love story: Lexa Kluger is engaged to Moritz Weissmann, a Jewish doctor. Lexa’s brothers, Helmy and Erich, are becoming increasingly involved with the Nazi party, grateful to have “a real job with a little pay at least.” We see the rise of fascism — but also the yearning to belong that pulls these young men into the darkness. Carson offers a timeless story of how decent people can be led astray.  

"An old play can be a sort of time capsule, giving us a glimpse of the attitudes and feelings of the time when they were written,” said Mr. Bank. “In Crooked Cross, Carson doesn’t know what’s coming. She tells the story of two German families, connected by love and threatened by hate. What comes through so clearly is the dangerous power of a mob, but Carson writes with amazing compassion, sympathy and vision.” 

The novel of Crooked Cross was reissued in April by Persephone Books in the U.K. Nicola Beauman, Persephone’s founder, first discovered Crooked Cross when researching pre-Second World War British female writers. Laura Freeman, writing about the novel’s re-issue in The Times said, "It was written as a warning then and its message sounds just as urgently today as we worry about lost boys, strong men and old hatreds. If you have ever wondered how a nation was hooked and hypnotised by the Nazi party, Crooked Cross explains it with awful force."

The Mint Theater Company, which 'finds and produces worthwhile plays from the past that have been lost or forgotten.' I’ve never seen a production there that was a sliver less than superb. Rachel Crothers’s Susan and God, John Galsworthy’s The Skin Game, Harley Granville-Barker’s The Madras House, N.C. Hunter’s A Day by the Sea, Dawn Powell’s Walking Down Broadway, Jules Romains’s Doctor Knock, John Van Druten’s London Wall: All these fine plays and others just as good have been exhumed by the Mint to memorable effect in the 13 years that I’ve been reviewing the company, a tribute to the uncanny taste and unfailing resourcefulness of Jonathan Bank, the artistic director," said Terry Teachout in the Wall Street Journal. Mint was awarded an OBIE Award for “combining the excitement of discovery with the richness of tradition” and a special Drama Desk Award for “unearthing, presenting and preserving forgotten plays of merit.”

Tickets for Crooked Cross, which are on sale now, start at $39 and may be purchased online at MintTheater.org.  Tickets may also be purchased by phone at 212/714-2442, ext. 2 or in person at the Theatre Row Box Office, Tuesday through Sunday from 12 Noon to 5 pm (closed Mondays). 

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