Machinal (Royal National Theatre) - Softcover

Treadwell, Sophie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1854592114 ISBN 13: 9781854592118

Publisher: Nick Hern Books, 1995

Synopsis

A major rediscovery of a forgotten woman playwright of the twenties, Machinal is a powerful expressionist play about the status of women in an increasingly mechanized society, and the torture of a loveless marriage.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Sophie Treadwell was a campaigning journalist in America between the wars. Among her assignments was the sensational murder involving Ruth Snyder, who with her lover, Judd Gray, had murdered her husband and gone to the electric chair. Out of this came MACHINAL, a powerful expressionist drama about the dependent status of women and the living hell of a loveless marriage. Successfully premiered on Broadway in 1928 with Clark Gable as the lover, the play was seen in London two years later, provoked a sensation in Tairov's version in Moscow in 1933, and was then largely forgotten until revivals in New York and London in the 1990s.

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), after which she gave up writing for the stage. She died in 1970.

About this edition

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1854592114
• ISBN 13: 9781854592118
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96