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.
‘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
