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Book This Event
Thursday 17 April
6:30pm
Join us for a rehearsed reading of the 1935 play Crooked Cross by Sally Carson, based on her 1934 novel of the same title, about a young woman's political and emotional awakening in Nazi Germany. Directed by George Turvey, artistic director of Papatango, with a professional cast, this will be its first revival since it was staged at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and then transferred to the West End.

The play was a great success. According to the theatre critic of The Times,
The real strength of the play lies in the nature of its criticism of its subject. Miss Carson is not proclaiming the virtues of any alternative system, whether it be Communist or democratic. Still less does she plead the cause of Judaism as such. Instead she shows a group of friends and lovers and parents caught up in a tragedy of confused values in which some are seeking to compel hope by violence and in which others, who will not deceive themselves, perish. Through it all she never preaches, or loses touch, through hate or prejudice, with the human beings she represents. She has a point of view, but she is an artist, not a tub-thumper, with the consequence that all her people live and her truth is spoken in their nature and their suffering.
This is despite the fact that the dialogue of Crooked Cross caused some difficulty with the Lord Chamberlain’s office which, for example, insisted that every ‘Heil Hitler’ was cut. The play continued to draw protests from right-wing elements in Britain who viewed it as anti-German propaganda and thought it too negative about the recently-established Nazi government.
Madeira and cheese straws will be served at this event.
Picture Caption
Photograph of the lead actress in the West End transfer of Crooked Cross from The Bystander, January 27th 1937.