Theater: George Tabori's Mein Kampf
George Tabori's 1987 play about two Jews who meet a young Adolf Hitler during his time an aspiring artist is dark and humorous alternate history. That Tabori, a Budapest-born survivor of the Nazi and Arrow Cross purge of Hungarian Jews (his father was not so fortunate, and died in Auschwitz), is capable of finding any humor in Hitler's beginnings is a feat of the spirit. The plot of the play is a feat of theater. Upon being rejected by the Academy of Arts in Vienna, a young Hitler befriends two Jews in the Austrian city. One of them is a bookseller named Schlomo Herzl, who despite Hitler's petulance, ugliness, and blossoming anti-Semitism, takes the future maniac under his wing and protects him--not because he has to, but because his faith instructs him to be charitable and compassionate. To Aug. 19 at H Street Playhouse, 1365 H St. NE. Web: http://www.scenatheater.org/