Image for Crooked Cross by Sally Carson. An idyllic Christmas scene, a family decorates a Christmas Tree, however, at the bottom of the scene, some ornaments have swastikas on them.

Crooked Cross

by Sally Carson
directed by Jonathan Bank

September 20th through November 1st

Performance Schedule:
  • Tues., Thurs., Fri., & Sat. at 7:00 pm
  • Wed., Sat., & Sun at 2:00 pm

Added 7:00 pm performance 9/24, 10/8 & 10/29
No 2:00 pm performance on 9/20 & 9/24
No performance on 10/10

Where:

Theatre Row Stage 4
410 West 42nd Street

CROOKED CROSS draws us into the story of the Klugers, a typical middle-class Bavarian family, facing the economic and political challenges of life in Germany between Christmas 1932 and June 1933. The heart of the play 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 we also see the yearning for belonging that drives these young men into the darkness.

CROOKED CROSS is Sally Carson’s dramatization of her novel of the same name. The novel was published in 1934, the play premiered in Birmingham (U.K.) in 1935.

CROOKED CROSS is Sally Carson’s dramatization of her novel of the same name. The novel was published in 1934. Persephone Press reissued the long out-of-print novel this April. The play premiered in Birmingham (U.K.) in 1935.

Carson writes with great compassion, sympathy and vision: “Through it all she never preaches, or loses touch, through hate or prejudice, with the human beings she represents,” The Times.

Sylvia “Sally” Carson, was born in 1901 in Surrey. For several years she was a publisher’s reader and taught dance; during this time she frequently went to stay in Bavaria with friends. It was first in Germany and then back in England that she wrote her trilogy of novels including Crooked Cross in 1934, followed by The Prisoner (1936) and A Traveler Passes By (1938) which continue the story of the Kluger family. In 1938 she married Eric Humphries who ran the Bradford works of the publisher Lund Humphries, founded by his father. Together they had three children. Tragically, Sally died of breast cancer in 1941.