Despite Many Shortcomings, ‘Crooked Cross’ Is Both a Prophetic Work and a Timely One

The most intriguing thing about “Crooked Cross,” a play following a young, Jewish doctor and his gentile fiancée in Bavaria as the Third Reich rose to power, is when it was written: some time between 1934, when Sally Carson’s novel of the same title was published, and 1935, when her dramatic adaptation had its premiere at London. At that point, few could have predicted the extent of the atrocities that would unfold before Hitler was finally defeated.The Mint Theater Company’s new staging of “Cross” is among a crop of productions on Broadway and off that in recent years have focused on antisemitism as it has risen exponentially — or gained wider acknowledgment and exposure, at least — around the world. Carson, who was not a Jew, obviously demonstrated both courage and empathy in tackling the subject when she did.Sadly, those virtues alone don’t guarantee compelling drama, and even as tweaked by the Mint’s well-regarded artistic director, Jonathan Banks — who made “a few judicious cuts,” according to his program note — “Cross” is a mostly plodding affair, with characters and dialogue (some of it restored from the novel) that could have been crafted by a creative high school student seeking to dramatize this bleak period for a history assignment.The play opens as Lexa Kluger, the female protagonist, is decorating a Christmas tree with Helmy, one of her two brothers — both of whom will be seduced by the Nazi party in short order. Her fiancé, Moritz Weissmann, soon enters with his father to join the Klugers in celebrating the holiday. Lexa’s father praises his prospective son-in-law’s intelligence, and notes that he wishes his sons, neither of whom has steady work, “had the luck Moritz has had.”With the festering resentment and alienation that fueled Hitler’s rise underlined, “Cross,” which is set between late 1932 and May of the following year, proceeds to document how dire things became for Jews even then. Moritz loses his job and his passport, and it’s not long before he’s called a “filthy Jew” and a “beastly foreigner” in public.Jakob Winter, Ella Stevens, and Gavin Michaels in ‘Crooked Cross.’ Todd Cerveris PhotographyHelmy, meanwhile, begins rising through the party ranks. “I feel real for the first time in two years,” he tells Lexa, with whom he is especially close. “The Party — and the future of it — it’s given me everything that’s made my life normal again, made it something to begin to be a little proud of again, some sort of stability.” Later, after Helmy has predictably lost most of his soul, he will simply tell his sister, “First I’m a good Nazi … after that I’m your brother.” Their other sibling, Erich, doesn’t seem to have much of a soul — or a brain — to begin with. “Punishment, that’s what they want,” he says of the Jews, “and then all they got wouldn’t pay them out for the dirty tricks they’ve done to us, all the tribe of them.”Lexa and Moritz’s conversations, as they try to plot against increasingly daunting odds to plan a future together, can feel similarly stilted, but Mr. Bank seems to lean into their earnestness, posing a challenge to his actors. Ella Stevens, a recent graduate of Northwestern University making her New York stage debut, suffers in particular; despite a lovely presence, the actress is hobbled by lines that reduce Lexa to the devoted but ostensibly independent-minded sister/daughter/girlfriend. As Moritz, Samuel Adams projects the necessary smarts and decency but doesn’t get a chance to cook up much chemistry with Ms. Stevens. And while Gavin Michaels and Jakob Winter are convincing enough as, respectively, the initially sensitive Helmy and the boorish, brutish Erich, their dialogue and their characters’ journeys are equally predictable, as are those spoken and charted by the older actors. The latter include Katie Firth, who plays the eternally worried Frau Kluger, and Liam Craig, cast as her crotchety husband, who’s wary of the Nazis for what turn out to be practical reasons rather than moral concerns.Douglas Rees is at least more endearing as Moritz’s dad, Professor Weissmann, a cuddly mensch who, like his son — and millions of Jews who lived in Germany during that time — considers himself as much a citizen of his country as anyone else, and believes, at least at first, that others will come around to that view again, soon.Once it becomes clear that time is not on their side, the professor suggests Vienna as one possible refuge — unaware, obviously, of the fate that will meet Austrian Jews in a few short years, and many others soon after that. For all its shortcomings, “Crooked Cross” is revealed as both a prophetic work and, unfortunately, a timely one.

Despite Many Shortcomings, ‘Crooked Cross’ Is Both a Prophetic Work and a Timely One

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