Ruth Snyder’s crime was sensationalised in its day and well after it. An American who murdered her husband and paid with her life, her very public death in 1928 by electric chair has served as gruesome inspiration for, among others, Billy Wilder and Guns N’ Roses. Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 play infuses Snyder’s story with compassion and tragedy, without a hint of sentimentality.
This stark, magnetic revival draws on the play’s expressionist roots yet also renders it chillingly modern in showing how female criminality is still often depicted. Immaculately directed by Richard Jones, it is spare yet shocking.
