Machinal

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.

Extra Content: 'Treadwell holds the mirror up and says: "This is the world. Is this the way it should be?" I don't imagine that when she wrote it in 1928 she thought that it would have such resonance now.' Actors and directors who have worked on productions of Machinal – including Fiona Shaw, Lyndsey Turner and Natalie Abrahami – discuss the power and pertinence of Sophie Treadwell's extraordinary play, and why it deserves to be even more widely known. Read more in an article published in The Guardian, 7 June 2018.