It’s Friday, so I’m in The Wall Street Journal, this time with reviews of two off-Broadway shows, Address Unknown and The Joys of Sex.
Address Unknown is a two-man show starring Jim Dale and William Atherton, both of whom make the most of a fairly obvious script:
Adapted from a 1938 short story that made a big splash long, long ago, “Address Unknown” is a “Love Letters”-type epistolary play about Max Eisenstein (Mr. Dale), a Jewish art dealer in San Francisco, and Martin Schulse (Mr. Atherton), his Gentile partner and friend, who moves back to Germany in 1932 and promptly develops a massive crush on Hitler. Factor in the title and you can probably figure out most of the rest yourself (I did), not excluding the tricky “surprise” ending, which is strictly from O. Henry. What makes it all work are Messrs. Dale and Atherton, two old pros who act their parts to the hilt, ably enabled by the neat direction of Frank Dunlop and the flawless set (half streamlined, half gem