The Gathering Storm

Theater Review: Crooked Cross

By Eric Uhlfelder

In the years following the first World War, Gertrude Stein referred to American expatriates living in Paris in the 1920s as a Lost Generation.

That also described many young Germans a decade later when the Depression, inflation, and a collapsing economy turned their futures opaque. This is the setting of the Mint Theater’s current production of Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross. It’s the first time the play has been performed in the US.

For more than two decades, the Mint’s artistic director Jonathan Bank has unearthed lost plays that still resonate. And this production syncs with the British publisher Persephone Books’ recent reprint of Carson’s eponymously named novel, from which the play was spun. The title: an oblique reference to the Swastika.

This past August, The New Yorker followed the book’s release with a look back at the British-born author and the novel’s backstory. It notes publication was in part triggered by the 2024 US election—an event that has helped it “become a surprise breakout success in the U.K.”

The power of the story: Carson’s prescient observations about where Germany’s shifting political fortunes were leading the country in the early 1930s as the Nazis came to power. Ninety years afterwards, this compels attention.

Carson’s visit to a small Bavarian town in southern Germany made it plain to her that Germans who weren’t supporting the party had a bleak future. And if deemed undesirable, one had no future at all.

This reality tore at families like the Kluger’s around which the play evolves.

The relationships that drive the drama are between Lexa Kluger (the only daughter) and her young fiancée Dr. Moritz Weismann, and between Lexa and her blissful brother Helmy, with whom she’s closest, and the character that devolves the furthest.

Emerging Race laws made impossible an open marriage between a Jewish German and a gentile. This fuels the growing divide between Helmy and Lexa, who still wishes very much to be with Moritz, despite the new reality of Party first, family second. It’s not hard to guess where all this is heading.

Forced into hiding, Moritz is tormented by, “waiting that I can’t stand. Waiting for things to happen, waiting for a job that will never come, waiting for Lexa.”

Lexa fears how all this has turned her:” It’s making the effort to be different that’s so hard, trying to remember what I mustn’t say, what I have said, which lie I’ve told. And I’m getting awfully cunning.”

Her parents, Herr and Frau Kluger, are also compromised. Wanting to see their kids thrive, they also see what’s happening, made clear by an exasperated Helmy: “I don’t know what I want. But I’m tired of getting nothing – tired of being useless. And now this has come . . . we all want to be somebody, want to have something, make something.”

Lexa counters: “You mean you want to break something. And when you’ve broken everything you can touch, all of you – what do you think you’ll do then?”

Herr Kluger, a World War I veteran, knows too well what’s likely to come. Helmy turns on him: “You haven’t even joined the Party for the look of the thing. You’re pleased enough about us – that we’ve got jobs – and decent clothes – and boots – but you don’t care a damn about the spirit of the thing – not really.”

For theatergoers not familiar with the history, the play may appear as dramatic fiction, at times even over the top. It’s anything but.

The cast does well to make us believe how one of the world’s most culturally refined societies could devolve, chasing opportunity with no idea what’s being unleashed on their country and beyond; while there are others knowing all too well what will be.

Samuel Adams’ finely played Moritz has no illusions. Gavin Michaels conveys Helmy’s transformation from loving, high-spirited brother to true believer. And Ella Stevens’ Lexa shows well how it feels to be caught in between.

While more minimalistic in staging than previous Mint productions, the dynamic set designs by Alexander Woodward provides the essential backgrounds, highlighted by an exceptional night-time alpine setting that fills the entire space in the penultimate scene.

Crooked Cross’ message is compelling and the production extremely well done. But for those who know the history, one wished it could’ve been even more.

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Crooked Cross is at the Mint Theater on Theater Row through November 1^st.
410 West 42^nd Street
https://minttheater.org
212-315-0231