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Bad Seed
Presents a dramatization of March's novel featuring Rhoda Penmark, who uses her strange powers and talent for evil to force others to give her what she wants.
84 pages, Paperback
Published October 1, 1956
9 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Maxwell Anderson
139 books12 followersMaxwell Anderson was an American playwright, poet, and journalist. He won a Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1933, for Both Your Houses, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for both Winterset and High Tor.
Several of his plays were adapted into successful movies, including Anne of the Thousand Days and Key Largo.
Several of his plays were adapted into successful movies, including Anne of the Thousand Days and Key Largo.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
July 7, 2022
Christine Penmark has it all, including a psychopathic daughter and some crazy nightmares. The play follows her downward spiral from tenuous peace to guilty despair.
Edit: Apparently when I watched the movie I forgot all about Emory immediately after. D'oh! This play is deliciously creepy and my first big role: Christine Penmark.
Edit: I kept re-reading the play and I've come to the conclusion that Rhoda and this play is a metaphor for the USA during the 50s-the government, the nuclear family, the press, everything. I probably should write a paper about it...
Edit: Apparently when I watched the movie I forgot all about Emory immediately after. D'oh! This play is deliciously creepy and my first big role: Christine Penmark.
Edit: I kept re-reading the play and I've come to the conclusion that Rhoda and this play is a metaphor for the USA during the 50s-the government, the nuclear family, the press, everything. I probably should write a paper about it...
May 12, 2020
Saying this reminded me of Defending Jacob is perhaps unfair to Bad Seed, given that it predates that novel by a few decades. But it’s easy to see the parallels: a parent who begins to question whether their child is evil, although Bad Seed is both more direct and more disturbing.
Rhoda is a precocious eight-year-old girl, well behaved and beloved by everyone who encounters her sunny disposition and excellent manners. When a classmate turns up dead, Rhoda’s mother begins to wonder if her child is somehow responsible.
This play is not subtle, but it made for an engrossing read. Trying to find an eight-year-old girl capable of playing this role (without taking on lifelong trauma) seems almost impossible, which is perhaps why it’s not staged more often. Rhoda would be a difficult part for a classically-trained adult actor to play, doubly so because of how Anderson weaves in multiple interpretations and space to allow a director to shape his own version of events.
Some considered Bad Seed a preferable choice for the 1955 Pulitzer Prize, which ended up going to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I tend to agree. Recommended.
ETA: After reading the original novel, I’m impressed at how Anderson adapted the story to stage. The play keeps the central themes and essential plot points while shifting to take advantage of the stage’s strengths. One of the better adaptations I’ve read.
Rhoda is a precocious eight-year-old girl, well behaved and beloved by everyone who encounters her sunny disposition and excellent manners. When a classmate turns up dead, Rhoda’s mother begins to wonder if her child is somehow responsible.
This play is not subtle, but it made for an engrossing read. Trying to find an eight-year-old girl capable of playing this role (without taking on lifelong trauma) seems almost impossible, which is perhaps why it’s not staged more often. Rhoda would be a difficult part for a classically-trained adult actor to play, doubly so because of how Anderson weaves in multiple interpretations and space to allow a director to shape his own version of events.
Some considered Bad Seed a preferable choice for the 1955 Pulitzer Prize, which ended up going to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I tend to agree. Recommended.
ETA: After reading the original novel, I’m impressed at how Anderson adapted the story to stage. The play keeps the central themes and essential plot points while shifting to take advantage of the stage’s strengths. One of the better adaptations I’ve read.
October 22, 2018
2.5 stars. A classic example of the limitations of stage adaptations from novels, especially one with such a psychological bent. What is presented in the novel as a series of slowly-developing interior revelations is announced in the play with cumbersome, wordy exposition. While this might have been a stronger work in the hands of a modernist playwright willing to experiment with dramatizing psychological states, Anderson just delivers a soapy, talky melodrama that hasn’t aged as well as his source material. That being said, I would like to read some of his earlier original dramas to see how having more freedom to flesh out his own characters and dialogue might compare to this faithful-yet-sterile adaptation of William March's novel.
February 3, 2016
It's hard to deny that "Bad Seed" (sometimes "The Bad Seed") has its charm. What that charm is, or why it's there, is a little harder to explain. Part noir, part melodrama, part high camp Shirley Temple homage, this play about a child sociopath shouldn't be as cute or as chilling as it is. But somehow, the balance between the ridiculous and the horrible comes down on the side of terror more often than the side of kitsch, so the show stands on its own two feet without tap-dancing.
June 11, 2019
Bad Seed was a well-written play - although a bit dark. Well, I guess that a play about a murderous 8-year old with no soul.....is probably more than a "bit" dark!. Just the same, it is well written. I enjoy her foil, Leroy, who has her figured out from the beginning. There are a couple of well-turned twists in the plot (I won't spoil it)....which definitely add to the story.
September 14, 2024
Excellent, still chilling thriller about a child killer.
It's melodrama, but it's excellent melodrama. Although she's never called this in the play or novel, likely because the term wasn't as well known when it was written, but Rhoda Penmark is an 8 year old sociopath. The limitations of the stage mean that the play can't put across the depths of Rhoda's exact thoughts and feelings (or lack thereof) as well as the novel did, but unquestionably that's what we're dealing with. To simply say it's a play about a child killer is a disservice-it's a psychological study of that child and her loving but weak and utterly outmatched mother as she slowly comes to the realization that her child is has not only committed several murders at 8 years old, but is utterly incapable of feeling guilt or any kind of actual moral code and will undoubtedly kill many more people over the course of her lifetime.
What's brilliant is how convincing the portrait of Rhoda as budding sociopath is-Rhoda is utterly incapable of actual feelings of love or hate or certainly morality or ethics of any kind, although she is capable of emulating love and affection quite well-when it suits her and getting whatever she wants. The situations are very melodramatic and over the top-but Rhoda is not. If you've ever had the misfortune of knowing an acutal sociopath, incapable of human feeling-you'll recognize them in Rhoda. It reads as chilling as it must be to see it performed
You can see just how good this play must have been on stage by watching the original movie (avoid the remakes) with Patty McCormack, Nancy Kelly, and Eileen Heckart. Most of the cast is the Broadway originals, and they are wonderful. Just avoid the last 5 minutes and a ridiculous, tacked on ending that was mandated to be included in the film because the Hayes Code at the time required evil doers in cinema receive some punishment.
It's melodrama, but it's excellent melodrama. Although she's never called this in the play or novel, likely because the term wasn't as well known when it was written, but Rhoda Penmark is an 8 year old sociopath. The limitations of the stage mean that the play can't put across the depths of Rhoda's exact thoughts and feelings (or lack thereof) as well as the novel did, but unquestionably that's what we're dealing with. To simply say it's a play about a child killer is a disservice-it's a psychological study of that child and her loving but weak and utterly outmatched mother as she slowly comes to the realization that her child is has not only committed several murders at 8 years old, but is utterly incapable of feeling guilt or any kind of actual moral code and will undoubtedly kill many more people over the course of her lifetime.
What's brilliant is how convincing the portrait of Rhoda as budding sociopath is-Rhoda is utterly incapable of actual feelings of love or hate or certainly morality or ethics of any kind, although she is capable of emulating love and affection quite well-when it suits her and getting whatever she wants. The situations are very melodramatic and over the top-but Rhoda is not. If you've ever had the misfortune of knowing an acutal sociopath, incapable of human feeling-you'll recognize them in Rhoda. It reads as chilling as it must be to see it performed
You can see just how good this play must have been on stage by watching the original movie (avoid the remakes) with Patty McCormack, Nancy Kelly, and Eileen Heckart. Most of the cast is the Broadway originals, and they are wonderful. Just avoid the last 5 minutes and a ridiculous, tacked on ending that was mandated to be included in the film because the Hayes Code at the time required evil doers in cinema receive some punishment.
July 29, 2025
I’ve just finished the novel, and was interested in the stage adaptation to see how it dealt with the interiority of the source material, i.e. Christine Penmark’s unspoken agonies over her daughter Rhoda’s homicidal tendencies. How also to reveal her hidden origins, some of which she learns in conversation but still more from reading research notes and library material?
What we get is an efficiently streamlined two-act version of the story, beginning with the departure of Kenneth Penmark – now an army colonel rather than a surveyor for a steamship company, a more immediately assimilable profession for an audience – and concluding with his grief-stricken and incomprehending return. Christine’s father Richard Bravo, dead before the book begins, is resurrected, his role being to confirm her suspicions about her true background, after which he downplays her fears and leaves her to get on with it. Bessie Denker’s history of murder is simplified and taken up the class scale (‘that lovely dewy face… that melting cultured voice’), but whether this is for dramatic economy or the comfort of theatregoers is impossible to say.
Recognisable (and dramatically effective, so why not?) stretches of dialogue are imported wholesale. The repeated motif of Rhoda’s piano-playing produces a stunning theatrical moment in the final scene. The action is confined to the Penmarks’ apartment, and this makes the necessarily frequent entrances of watchful janitor Leroy somewhat implausible. Events are foreshadowed by a gun in a drawer, a bottle of borrowed sleeping pills and a heart condition. With the mental soliloquising absent, much would have depended on the acting (Nancy Kelly won the Tony for Best Actress as Christine and Patty McCormack was widely praised as Rhoda.) It is difficult to imagine the piece being revived in modern times, other than to deliberately guy it, and according to the Broadway Database it has not been restaged since the 1954-5 season.
What we get is an efficiently streamlined two-act version of the story, beginning with the departure of Kenneth Penmark – now an army colonel rather than a surveyor for a steamship company, a more immediately assimilable profession for an audience – and concluding with his grief-stricken and incomprehending return. Christine’s father Richard Bravo, dead before the book begins, is resurrected, his role being to confirm her suspicions about her true background, after which he downplays her fears and leaves her to get on with it. Bessie Denker’s history of murder is simplified and taken up the class scale (‘that lovely dewy face… that melting cultured voice’), but whether this is for dramatic economy or the comfort of theatregoers is impossible to say.
Recognisable (and dramatically effective, so why not?) stretches of dialogue are imported wholesale. The repeated motif of Rhoda’s piano-playing produces a stunning theatrical moment in the final scene. The action is confined to the Penmarks’ apartment, and this makes the necessarily frequent entrances of watchful janitor Leroy somewhat implausible. Events are foreshadowed by a gun in a drawer, a bottle of borrowed sleeping pills and a heart condition. With the mental soliloquising absent, much would have depended on the acting (Nancy Kelly won the Tony for Best Actress as Christine and Patty McCormack was widely praised as Rhoda.) It is difficult to imagine the piece being revived in modern times, other than to deliberately guy it, and according to the Broadway Database it has not been restaged since the 1954-5 season.
June 24, 2025
A classic horror story!
I think this would be a perfect piece of literature to use as a comparative study to Dahl's short story "Charles."
I think this would be a perfect piece of literature to use as a comparative study to Dahl's short story "Charles."
September 16, 2015
Based on the national book award winning novel and the film of the same name, The Bad Seed is a play that explores how young evil can manifest itself, in what ways environment makes a difference in development, and the very real phenomenon of childhood murder cases.
While I have not read the book and have seen the movie only once many years ago, I picked the play up for my preparation to play Reginald Tasker. The play does have a significantly different ending than the film, likely due to the beginnings of the MPAA and their original moral code, and is likely closer to that of the novel. The story is about a series of events that lead to a horrific conclusion, with some really fun, formulaic twists along the way.
In terms of Anderson's treatment, the play is well written except for some major flaws in stage direction and execution. The story, of course, is solid, with an incredible manner of transmuting the story onto the stage that is impressive. I would be just as impressed with Silence of the Lambs being effectively moved to a chamber drama in much the same way.
I thought the dialogue was somewhat strange at times, with some areas of the play obviously groping for exposition... For instance, with my character, I don't understand why I am having a conversation with Bravo's daughter about her father and his line of work, and giving his daughter the complete history of his life in writing crime stories, when she is the man's daughter. Very strange, except for the fact that it is clear that Anderson wants to include the expository information but seems not to have a place to put it. Another complaint I have (and this is completely useless but to the performers) is the choice of what to include in stage directions. In one scene, there are incredibly specific instructions for the characters about what to do with mixing and serving drinks that serves no purpose but to space out long expository paragraphs (but doesn't seem to have any purpose but that). Perhaps I am used to Eugene O'Neill's REASON for every movement or a flutter of hands, but this one goes a little overboard with useless direction that doesn't have to do with characterization, plot, or motivation. They are just there.
Overall, I enjoyed it, and I look forward to performing it on stage. it is a fun, evil little piece, and definitely plays with some really strange and horrible aspects of the human condition from beginning to end.
While I have not read the book and have seen the movie only once many years ago, I picked the play up for my preparation to play Reginald Tasker. The play does have a significantly different ending than the film, likely due to the beginnings of the MPAA and their original moral code, and is likely closer to that of the novel. The story is about a series of events that lead to a horrific conclusion, with some really fun, formulaic twists along the way.
In terms of Anderson's treatment, the play is well written except for some major flaws in stage direction and execution. The story, of course, is solid, with an incredible manner of transmuting the story onto the stage that is impressive. I would be just as impressed with Silence of the Lambs being effectively moved to a chamber drama in much the same way.
I thought the dialogue was somewhat strange at times, with some areas of the play obviously groping for exposition... For instance, with my character, I don't understand why I am having a conversation with Bravo's daughter about her father and his line of work, and giving his daughter the complete history of his life in writing crime stories, when she is the man's daughter. Very strange, except for the fact that it is clear that Anderson wants to include the expository information but seems not to have a place to put it. Another complaint I have (and this is completely useless but to the performers) is the choice of what to include in stage directions. In one scene, there are incredibly specific instructions for the characters about what to do with mixing and serving drinks that serves no purpose but to space out long expository paragraphs (but doesn't seem to have any purpose but that). Perhaps I am used to Eugene O'Neill's REASON for every movement or a flutter of hands, but this one goes a little overboard with useless direction that doesn't have to do with characterization, plot, or motivation. They are just there.
Overall, I enjoyed it, and I look forward to performing it on stage. it is a fun, evil little piece, and definitely plays with some really strange and horrible aspects of the human condition from beginning to end.
December 20, 2023
I liked the premise of this play, and the overall story. I felt the adaptation suffered a bit because they put a LOT of information in the stage directions - things that couldn't possibly translate to an audience. Also I'm sure at the time the ending was thrilling, but to a modern reader it felt contrived. I could have done without the last scene entirely.
January 19, 2019
This adaptation of "Bad Seed" truly was one for the ages. For people who haven't read this before, I do truly recommend the play, for reading or watching being produced on stage. The way the characters are portrayed here, especially is very enticing and keeps you on the edge of your seat all the way through.
The story follows the main character, Rhonda, who has committed a murder, with her mother attempting to come to terms with this, and protect her daughter. Throughout the story, we see characters speaking to each other, in a way that holds mystery and yet allows the reader to pick-up on what the author is attempting to convey through different words, and such. Throughout the play, you dig deep into the psyche of each character, in a way where you feel that you truly can connect.
Overall, the play conveyed everything very well, with multiple "blink and you miss it" type moments throughout. I give it 5/5 stars, and recommend it to anyone who wants a little darkness in their lives, for at least a moment.
The story follows the main character, Rhonda, who has committed a murder, with her mother attempting to come to terms with this, and protect her daughter. Throughout the story, we see characters speaking to each other, in a way that holds mystery and yet allows the reader to pick-up on what the author is attempting to convey through different words, and such. Throughout the play, you dig deep into the psyche of each character, in a way where you feel that you truly can connect.
Overall, the play conveyed everything very well, with multiple "blink and you miss it" type moments throughout. I give it 5/5 stars, and recommend it to anyone who wants a little darkness in their lives, for at least a moment.
October 28, 2013
I would give this play 5 out of 5 stars. Although it is very similar to the novel, it has been dramatized by Maxwell Anderson. The theme is heartlessness. Rhoda Penmark has no qualms about killing anyone who gets in her way, including Claude Daigle, a boy from her school. While she appears to be a perfect little girl, she actually has no pity or empathy. In contrast, her mother, Christine, is very kind and loving, and feels immensely sorry for Mrs. Daigle when Claude died. Christine goes into a depression after she realizes who Rhoda is. The author warns the audience about what could happen if we don't respect each other and society. A symbol is Rhoda's metal shoes. She hit Claude with them and then burned them to hide the evidence. When Leroy, the janitor, finds them, she murders him to keep him from telling the police. The shoes are a symbol of her ruthlessness and fear of being caught. This play is great for an audience who appreciates being scared.
March 1, 2014
A gripping tale that asks questions about why we are the way we are and what we should do about it. The form and style definitely fit in with 1950s dramas (each scene's action rises until a dramatic climax ends it with a blackout and the stage directions reflect the stage manager's notes from a successful production), but the theme seems beyond its years. If you know a talented elementary-aged actress, find a way to produce this show for her.
April 2, 2012
Although this was an assigned book for school, I found myself really enjoying the play. Whenever I come across a character who is extremely manipulative, cunning, or psychopathic, I really can't help but love them instantaneously. Thus was the case with Rhoda. I adored her for using her adorable façade to evade detection by those around her.
All in all, it was an excellent play.
All in all, it was an excellent play.
October 20, 2020
This was my second play! (I was nine, and not aloud to read multiple parts... it figures) Also my first big role.
If you are looking for creepy, this is definitely a good choice. It makes for a great production, and can have a fairly easy set.
If you are looking for creepy, this is definitely a good choice. It makes for a great production, and can have a fairly easy set.
May 31, 2023
Absolutely chilling play. I would dearly love to read it with friends, but would also slap a half dozen trigger warnings on it. I do like how any violence is kept off the stage however. More effective and scary to leave it to the audience's imagination.
September 26, 2011
OH.MY.GOD. This play is amazing! It is the creepiest thing i have ever read!!!oh my god.
November 22, 2011
Like The Omen only a little girl. Not terribly believable and a lot of psychoanalytical mumbo jumbo attached.
May 24, 2012
Creepy. Really well done.
March 1, 2014
Basic play about a snobby child killing another student over a handwriting award. Seemed a bit contrived at parts, but that may just be their social expression.
October 28, 2015
They put this on my sophomore year in high school for the fall play. Did not get a part. The overall story is intriguing, but I like to have a person to root for in a book or play.
August 7, 2017
I guess the question comes up again: What is the nature of evil?
November 4, 2018
Its a spectacular show if you can pull it off it for sensitive people it can be very traumatizing and its not for children under the age of about 8 or 9
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April 13, 2022Sharp Objects vibes
November 3, 2022
Rhoda is a girlboss
November 26, 2022
A pretty faithful adaptation of the book but missing the sheer madness and panic of Christine's inner thoughts.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews