The Interminable Suicide of Gregory Church

The hilarious, self-deprecating Daniel Kitson, a rumpled and stuttering British raconteur, may seem a strange ambassador for the epistolary play. Yet his rigorously unassuming new piece revives that never-popular form and makes it elegant and charming. What starts out as a reminiscence about discovering a trove of old letters in an attic changes magically into a tale that crosses Borges-level invention with the best bits of Jane Austen.—Helen Shaw