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 The Theatreguide.London Review

In March 2020 the covid-19 epidemic forced the closure of all British theatres. Some companies adapted by putting archive recordings of past productions online, others by streaming new shows, and various online archives preserve still more vintage productions. Even as things return to normal we continue to review the experience of watching live theatre onscreen.

Crooked Cross
Mint Theater online    February 2026

New York's Mint Theater Company specializes in rediscovering lost and neglected plays, mainly from the early Twentieth Century. The company staged Sally Carson's 1934 Crooked Cross in the Autumn of 2025 and recorded one performance, which is now available online.

Carson's drama is a remarkable accomplishment, as a British writer shows striking insight into and sympathy for some basically unpolitical characters in what was for her contemporary Germany.

We first meet the happy family – middle aged parents, adult and teen children and their friends – at Christmas 1932 and leave them on Midsummer Night 1933 when some have become Nazis and some Nazi victims.

The daughter of the house is in love with a brilliant young doctor who was raised Catholic but is, by Nazi definition, Jewish, and his losing his job is one of the first signs of change.

But even before that her brothers have begun attending Nazi meetings, though they treat the Party more like an extension of the Boy Scouts, all about songs and uniforms.

One of Carson's insights is that this is how it starts. None of the boys is really political, even by the play's end, but the more they commit to the fun, the more they find themselves committed to the doctrine.

The strongest scene in the play comes when the most innocent of the boys tries to verbalize what the attraction of the Party is, and finds himself saying that it is the security of belonging and the pride in committing to something, even if he doesn't really believe in it.

Unfortunately that speech stands out because it is one of the few moments that the play really comes alive. Unusually among Mint Theater productions, Crooked Cross is more impressive as a text than a piece of theatre.

Director Jonathan Bank has trouble focusing the play when the doomed lovers are clearly the centre of the plot but the secondary characters undergo more interesting and dramatic emotional journeys. And this is reflected in the acting as the performers (again unusually for Mint productions) seem very tentative in their characterisations.

I never for a moment believed in the central romance, because Ella Stevens and Samuel Adams show nothing in their voices or body language to suggest any passion or yearning behind the words they speak.

And that one moment in Gavin Michaels' portrayal of the brother is the only chance we get to tell him apart from the other young men in Nazi uniforms.

Crooked Cross too rarely transcends being an insightful historical document to become living theatre.

Gerald Berkowitz