Address Unknown, a play based on an anti-fascist novel that was banned in 1930’s Germany, will be performed by pianist Evgeny Kissin and baritone Thomas Hampson in New York tomorrow night.
The play explores the erosion of the friendship between a San Francisco-based, Jewish art dealer (Kissin) and his former business partner (Hampson) who has returned to Germany. The play’s story is told through correspondence between and read by the two men.
The Cherry Orchard Festival, which is presenting the performance at Town Hall, said of the play, “In an era of austerity, recession, and rising nationalism, two friends are torn apart when the Nazi regime infiltrates their friendship and families to devastating effect. Based on the bestselling (1938) book, which was written (by Katherine Kressmann Taylor) as an anti-fascist call to arms and banned in 1930’s Germany for dramatically exposing the threat of Nazism, Address Unkown is a timely warning of how humanity can fail in the face of extreme ideology.”
This production was first staged at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland in the summer of 2022.
A Q&A session with the actors will follow the performance.
In a recent interview, Kissin said he had originally suggested that Hampson appear with him in the production at Verbier.
Moscow-born Kissin said it is “simply amazing how relevant” the play is today.
What is described in the short story on which the play is based “has been happening between people from Russia the last few years,” he said.
He also said the events surrounding the October 7 attacks in Israel make the play “timely in a different way.”
Kissin said that although he has not acted before, he has frequently recited poetry in public and read poetry since childhood. “I love reciting it,” he said.
Hampson, an American who now lives in Vienna and speaks German, called performing his role in the play “a fun challenge.”
Hampson said it is vital that “every generation” be wary of propaganda and “alternative facts,” and display “respect and tolerance for everyone around the world.”
According to a 2004 article in Playbill about an earlier production of the play, Taylor, an American, was a professor of creative writing and journalism at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where she became the first woman to earn tenure.
It also said Taylor’s novel was reissued in 1995 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of WWII concentration camps and that it has been translated into many European langages as well as Hebrew.
The New York-based Cherry Orchard Festival works, it said, “to introduce and promote global cultural activity and an exchange of ideas.”