The new play adapted from the acclaimed bestseller by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor began preview performances at the Promenade Theatre May 28.
Frank Dunlop directs the drama about "the friendship between a San Francisco based Jewish art dealer and his former business partner who has returned to Germany." Their bond "slowly erodes as the Nazi party comes to power in Address Unknown," which Dunlop himself adapted.
"As these dear friends become ideological enemies, one commits a cowardly betrayal while the other plots an ingenious – and deadly — revenge," according to the announcement.
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The tale was "an immediate literary sensation upon its initial publication in Story magazine in 1938." "Address Unknown" was published in book form a year later and was banned in Nazi Germany, and went on to be called "the most effective indictment of Nazism to appear in fiction" by The New York Times Book Review. The novel was also made into a 1944 film, produced by Columbia Pictures, directed by William Cameron Menzies, and starring Morris Carnovsky and Paul Lukas.
The Promenade is at 2162 Broadway at 76th Street. For tickets, got o www.telecharge.com or call (212) 239 6200.
Address Unknown is being produced by D and L productions.
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Address Unknown reunites Jim Dale with writer director Frank Dunlop, with whom he collaborated on the widely acclaimed Broadway production of Scapino.
A Tony Award-winner for the musical Barnum, and a multiple nominee for his many Broadway and off Broadway appearances, Dale has recently become well known for recording five of the Harry Potter novels, for which he has received a Grammy Award and three Grammy nominations. He was also awarded the MBE by Queen Elizabeth.
Dale's co-star, William Atherton, is a Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Obie Award winner who appeared in the original productions of John Guare's House of Blue Leaves and Rich and Famous, among many productions. He is well known to film audiences as the antagonistic news anchorman in the action blockbusters "Die Hard" and its sequel and as a zealous bureaucrat in the original smash hit comedy "Ghostbusters."
Address Unknown has been seen in Spain (San Sebastian, Teatro Principal), Italy (Milan, Teatro Verdi and Rome, Teatro Vascello), France (Paris, Theatre la Pepiniere-Opera), Israel (Tel Aviv and on tour), Argentina (Buenos Aires, the Juliio Rottenberg Company), Turkey, and Belgium, among others.
A television version of Address Unknown will premiere in Prague this May, followed by a stage production, which will open this June, concurrently with the opening of this production.
Designers are James Youmans (scenic) and David Lander (lighting).
Kathrine Kressmann Taylor (1903-1996) was an undiscovered writer before the 1938 publication of "Address Unknown." She won her first writing award at age 11, and with the prize money bought herself a set of The Book of Knowledge. Taylor went on to write three books and more than a dozen short stories, one of which was included in "The Best American Short Stories of 1956."
Taylor is also the author of "Until That Day" and "Diary of Florence in Flood."
For 19 years, she was a professor of creative writing and journalism at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where she was the first woman to earn tenure. "Address Unknown" was reissued in 1995, "to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps," and has been translated into several languages, including Spanish, French, Catalan, Italian, Hebrew, German, Greek, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Portuguese.
