CROOKED CROSS draws us into the story of the Klugers, facing the economic and political challenges of life in a quaint village in the Bavarian mountainside between Christmas 1932 and June 1933.
At the heart of the play is a family torn apart by conflicting loyalties. Lexa Kluger is engaged to Moritz Weissmann, a Jewish doctor. Lexa’s brothers, Helmy and Erich, are becoming increasingly involved with the Nazi party. 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. Persephone Books 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.
Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen
Sat. Sept. 27 after the 2:00 pm performance
Join us for a special EnrichMint Event and live taping of the radio show and podcast, Person Place Thing with Randy Cohen and Artistic Director Jonathan Bank.
After the matinee performance of CROOKED CROSS
At Theatre Row 410 West 42nd Street
Person Place Thing is an interview show based on the idea that people are especially engaging when they speak, not directly about themselves, but something they care about. Guests talk about one person, one place, and one thing with particular meaning to them.
This episode, Artistic Director Jonathan Bank joins as guest. Musical Guest: Sean Hagerty
Attend the show and stay for the taping. Buy your tickets here.
Or sign up here to attend the taping.
Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, the Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for “Late Night With David Letterman” for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s “TV Nation.” He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for the New York Times Magazine. He is currently the creator and host of Person Place Thing, a public radio program.
CROOKED CROSS is Sally Carson’s dramatization of her novel of the same name. Persephone Books in Bath, U.K. republished Sally Carson’s novel in April, 2025.
When Crooked Cross was published in 1934 the Daily Mirror thought it ‘gripping and moving’, the Observer called it ‘a very good novel’, the Times Literary Supplement congratulated Sally Carson on ‘the delicacy of the love story which she has placed in this grim setting’ and the Coventry Herald thought it ‘a book everyone should read – and remember’. A year later it was turned into a West End play and then she wrote two sequels, The Prisoner (1936) and A Traveller Came By (1938). But with the outbreak of war, and Sally Carson’s death in 1941, her work was forgotten – until now.
Find Persephone Books and the novel Crooked Cross here.
