March 2–9, 2000

theater

Diary Straits

The Diary of Anne Frank

People’s Light and Theatre Company, 39 Conestoga Rd, Malvern, through April 1, 610-644-3500

Anne Frank has become a kind of Jewish saint. For postwar Jewish families, the Diary was in nearly every home library; as children we learned its details like a catechism.

In 1942, the family of Otto Frank (wife Edith, daughters, Margot and Anne) went into hiding, sequestered in a tiny "secret annex" where they and four other people lived under unimaginable constraints. The group endured for two years before being captured and deported to different camps. Only Otto Frank survived; Anne died just weeks before liberation.

Her diary chronicles in minute detail life in the secret annex. It is a document made more touching by its very ordinariness. For Anne, writing brought a semblance of normalcy to a limited existence. It is a remarkable story, but not one suited to the theater. Anne’s diary is so powerful because it is the result of a private act, an inner life silently expressed. But in the theater, the private fantasies must be staged, and a poignant personal incident becomes banal, another Holocaust cliché.

In any event, this play — originally written in 1955 by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett — is an undistinguished adaptation, creaking with contrivances. Several years ago the script was amended by Wendy Kesselman, who added some of the newly published diary material — Anne’s budding sexuality, the family’s Jewish identity. These extra scenes give additional dimension to Anne’s character, but fail to overcome the limitations of the original script. And in both versions it is a gross miscalculation to show the capture of the annex’s inhabitants. The actual diary ends, before this, on an optimistic note. Our imagined recreation of what must have followed is far more shattering than what is shown on stage.

At People’s Light and Theatre, director David Bradley and his colleagues (James F. Pyne, Jr. for scenery, Thomas C. Hase for lights, Charles T. Brastow for sound) have over-staged and over-designed the fragile piece, adding radio and narrative interludes, elaborate sound effects, and a veritable light show between scenes suggesting everything from fires to Kristallnacht. Some of this is in questionable taste — all of it serves to inflate and ultimately sink the intimate story. Pyne’s scenery, a circular framework, in particular is handsome but not suitable: It is too open to suggest cramped quarters, and the Expressionist details evoke an inapposite era and aesthetic.

This Anne Frank is competently but unmemorably acted, with the exception of Graham Smith as Dussel, who alone creates a sense of individuality and European-ness. Eve Moennig’s Anne is likely to be controversial. Traditionally, Anne is played as ethereally pretty and blessed with an inner holiness (Susan Strasberg and Natalie Portman on Broadway, Millie Perkins in the film). Moennig is nothing like them: short and plain, she is also brashly confident, even annoying. This is a welcome and probably accurate revision, but Moennig’s performance hasn’t much variety, and in any case she seems far too old — this is not a child but a small adult.

—David Anthony Fox