REVIEWS ...
Thursday, January 12, 2006
A gripping tale of horror-tainted friendship
By Christine Dolen
cdolen@herald.com
The epistolary play -- two actors take turns speaking, ''interacting'' only through bits of letters their characters have written each other -- can be a tough thing to pull off.
A.R. Gurney's hugely successful Love Letters has proven that an otherwise static dramatic form can, if done well, become involving theater. And now at GableStage, director Joseph Adler demonstrates that, with the right actors, design team and multimedia backgrounding, Address Unknown moves the play of letters into intense dramatic territory.
Written as a 1938 novella by American author Kathrine Kressmann Taylor (who hid her gender by dropping "Kathrine" when the work was published), Address Unknown imagines the correspondence of two longtime friends and business partners, Max Eisenstein and Martin Schulse. The stage version, adapted by British director Frank Dunlop, is getting just its third American production, after earlier ones in New York (2004) and Philadelphia (2005).
Near the end of 1932, Martin (Ken Clement) has taken his wife Elsa and their children back home to Germany, to life on a sprawling, beautiful country estate near Munich. He has left the thriving Schulse-Eisenstein Gallery in San Francisco in the capable hands of his dear friend Max (Avi Hoffman), a hard-working art dealer who also happens to be Jewish -- not that his faith has ever been an issue between the two. Until now.
Through black-and-white video assembled by Walter J. Collins, director Adler reminds the audience (including hundreds of Miami-Dade students at special morning performances) of the world outside Max's sleek, modernist gallery office and Martin's ornately appointed, antique-filled home.
As the aching melody of Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? gives way to hope, the United States slowly emerges from the devastation of the Depression. Battling its own post-World War I economic woes, Germany turns to a man who holds huge crowds spellbound with his nationalistic appeals to purity, superiority and pride: Adolph Hitler.
The video underscores the horror of Martin's growing admiration for Germany's "glorious" leader. Max can't bring himself to believe the change in his friend, even when Martin -- now part of the Nazi "in" crowd -- tells Max to stop writing, as it is too risky for him to be getting letters from a Jew. Yet Max still turns to his friend when his beloved sister Griselle, an Austrian actress with whom Martin once had an affair, defiantly accepts a part in a play in Berlin.
Max appeals to Martin to watch over Griselle. And that moves Address Unknown onto a path involving betrayal, death and brilliant revenge.
Through the taut, 75-minute drama, both Hoffman and Clement move from amiability to a necessary ruthlessness. Physically, they don't interact (their communication is through letters and cablegrams), though each sparingly enters the other's space at dramatically critical moments. The actors play their characters quite differently -- Hoffman's Max is vulnerable, then devastated; Clement's Martin begins to wear a cruel arrogance as easily as he dons a Nazi armband -- yet the two are powerfully matched.
The production's design elements are, typically for GableStage, first-rate. The handsome, side-by-side playing areas by Tim Connelly are further enhanced by scenic artist Genessa Proctor and Jeff Quinn, who "paints" with light. Adler orchestrates it all with a deft and devastating touch, and with his virtuoso actors takes the audience on a thrilling, disturbing journey.
