THEATRE REVIEW: ADDRESS UNKNOWN
REVIEWED BY LEXI LANDSMAN

ADRESSAT unbekannt were the two foreboding German words used during the war years to indicate that the addressee could not be found.

When letters were returned to sender, stamped in bold red ink, it often came as a portent signal that the addressee had met a grave fate.

It is a most apt title then of the term’s English translation for Jewish South-African born Moira Blumenthal’s production, Address Unknown, which is currently being staged at the Seymour Centre in Sydney.

Based on the novella first published in 1938 of the same name written by Katherine Kressman Taylor, the play is set in 1932 and chronicles the friendship between two business partners in a San Francisco gallery.

Utilising an interesting narrative device, the story is told entirely through their letter correspondence, which they read aloud, dated from 1932 to 1934.

Opening to a softly-blue lit stage, we meet Martin Schulse (played by Patrick Dickson), a German-born Aryan, who has returned to Germany with his wife and children and becomes active with the National Socialist Party while Max Eisenstein (played by John O’Hare), a German Jew, has remained to run the gallery in San Francisco.

With effective use of props, the stage is divided in half to indicate the two settings taking place simultaneously, right down to the table being divided in half.

While signalling the men’s different settings, the stage design also comes to effectively reflect their states of mind.

From a soft camaraderie revealed in their letters in the beginning, the men slowly realise their profound ideological differences as Hitler rises to power.

The turning point in the play comes when Martin reveals his own anti-Semitic beliefs, telling Max: “The Jew is he universal scapegoat and this is not without reason. Your people are troubled; it is the Jewish character.”

Despite realising his addressee is not the friend he once knew, Max pleads with Martin to find his missing sister, an actress and former lover of Martin’s, who has gone missing in Berlin.

Much to Max’s horror, Martin commits a cowardly act of betrayal and so Max exacts an ingenious and deadly revenge.

Dickson and O’Hare deliver stellar performances, providing effective juxtapositions of human strength and weakness -– roles that rotate as the play progresses.

Yet, the two-man script poses challenges in performance. Though a deliberate directorial choice, I found the eye-contact and interaction made between the men during the play disconcerting.

Though a device to show their psychological states of mind, it broke down the barrier of believability that the men were in two different settings -– a premise established from the start.

Despite this, music was used to great effect to indicate transitions of time and place from operatic pieces moving to spine-chilling audio of Nazi Germany.

Well directed, Address Unknown is a confronting and cautionary tale of the war years told through the faultlines of friendship.

It is a poignant reminder of the mercurial nature of the human condition and the importance of never forgetting past evils so they are never repeated again.

Address Unknown runs at the Seymour Theatre Centre until November 7. Enquiries: www.seymourcentre.com.au