Before addressing August, please note:
The September Meeting will be held on Wednesday 30th August!
I hope that some of you will be back from your holidays by then!
August: Machinal by Sophie Treadwell
Another of my National Theatre purchases, and a slightly 'different' play. It successfully ran in Broadway in 1928 with Clark Gable as 'The Lover'. It arrived in London two years later, provoked a sensation in Moscow in 1933 and then forgotten until revived in New York and London in the 1990s.
"This is a play written in anger. In the dead wasteland of male society - it seems to ask - isn't it necessary for certain women, at least, to resort to murder?" Nicholas Wright
The Plot: The story of a young woman who murders her husband. An ordinary woman. Any woman.
The Plan: The story is shown by showing the different phases of life that the woman goes through, none of which bring her any peace. She is soft and tender. Life around her is hard and mechanical. The story is told by voices around her. The play is named after the French word for mechanical.
Let's see how we get on!
Sophie Treadwell
Sophie Treadwell was a campaigning journalist in America between the wars. She covered the sensational murder case involving Ruth Snyder, who with her lover, Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and gone to the electric chair. From this Machinal, a powerful expressionist drama about the dependent status of women and the living hell of a loveless marriage, was born.
