A powerful expressionist drama from the 1920s about the dependent status of women in an increasingly mechanised society, based on the true story of Ruth Snyder.

Sophie Treadwell was a campaigning journalist in America between the wars. Among her assignments was the sensational murder involving Snyder, who with her lover, Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and gone to the electric chair.

'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

Sophie Treadwell's play Machinal was first seen on Broadway in 1928, in London in 1930, and was later revived in the 1990s.

This edition of Machinal includes an introduction by Judith E. Barlow.

About the Author
Sophie Treadwell was born in California in 1885. She went to High School in San Francisco and then to the University of California, from which she graduated in 1906 and became a reporter on the San Francisco Bulletin. The highlights of her career as a journalist included an investigative series on homeless women, an exclusive interview with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, and a spell in Europe as one of the first women foreign correspondents covering the 1914-18 War. She wrote four novels and more than thirty plays, including O Nightingale (1922), Gringo (1922), Machinal (1928), Ladies Leave (1929), Lusita (1931), Plumes in the Dust (1936), For Saxophone (1939-41) and Hope for a Harvest (1941). She died in 1970.

Reviews

'Gripping... doesn't loosen its hold on the senses until its shattering climax'

* Independent *

'Stingingly fresh and provocative'

* Time Out New York *

'[A work of] rare and disturbing beauty'

* New York Times *

'Gaspingly intense... Machinal remains pretty extraordinary stuff... [Treadwell's] spare, percussive language frequently feels like it could have been written yesterday'

* Time Out *

'A dazzling piece of work... Machinal, written in 1928, has lost none of its cold fury, its expressionistic power to depict a woman trapped by a society that expects her to marry and conform. It is astonishingly modern'

* Whatsonstage *

'An unforgettable portrait of a particular woman and of America itself as a hellishly dehumanised assembly line'

* Guardian *

'Feels strikingly modern: its sharp, splintered depiction of a young woman breaking apart in a dehumanising, mechanised world could have been written yesterday... an eloquent and groundbreaking play'

* Financial Times *

'Machinal was decades ahead of its time and still feels astonishingly, and depressingly, pertinent'

* Radio Times *

'Captivating, intense and resonant... a fascinating piece, a formally bold and explicitly feminist study of an ordinary woman who snaps under societal pressure... demonstrates Treadwell's adventurousness as a playwright'

* The Stage *



Book Information
ISBN 9781854592118
Author Sophie Treadwell
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Nick Hern Books
Publisher Nick Hern Books
Weight(grams) 111g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 128mm * 8mm