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. 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
