Alexander Iziliaev

LESSONS LEARNED: The Wilma Theater's Our Class invents the shared circumstances of students who grow up to be involved in the 1941 Jedwabne massacre.

It's fair to ask, after seeing the Wilma Theater's American première of Tadeusz Slobodzianek's Our Class, if we're responding more to the historical event than the play based on it. Simply recounting the 1941 massacre of 1,600 Jews in Jedwabne, Poland — blamed on Nazis, but eventually proven to be the work of their Catholic neighbors — produces a visceral reaction of dismay, despair and disgust. Poles still argue about the number murdered (as if killing only 200 was somehow less heinous), and anti-Semitism persists.

Crafting all this into a play spanning 80 years is no easy task. Slobodzianek's script, translated by Ryan Craig, bases some characters on historical figures, but invents their shared circumstances: Five Jewish, five Catholic, they begin as congenial classmates in 1926, gradually fractured by ingrained prejudices and outside pressures.

Director Blanka Zizka assembles a strong cast whose subtle aging is superbly realized without makeup or costume changes. Marsha Ginsberg's set seals the action on a dirty plain scattered with chairs and dead tree stalks, surrounded by imposing black walls. A large translucent structure morphs from a quaint schoolhouse to the barn where Jews are burned alive, and later a glowing purgatory where the dead wander restlessly. Thom Weaver's eerie lighting sculpts with stark fluorescents and audience-illuminating floods.

The characters' rich stories weave together to reveal contrary perspectives simultaneously. When Dora (Emilie Krause) is raped by three former classmates in the frenzy preceding the mass killing, we hear all four's inner thoughts and feelings, amplifying the horror by making us identify with all sides.

Our Class ' first act ends with 1941, leaving 60 years to cover after intermission. Nothing later is as harrowing as the massacre, of course, but Zizka's production shapes a different sort of suspense, as we learn how both survivors and perpetrators cope. Wladek (Ed Swidey) marries Jewish heiress Rachelka (Kate Czajkowski), forcing her conversion. Zocha (Krista Apple) hides Menachem (Ross Beschler) through the war, but is persecuted years later in America when other Poles learn that she helped Jews. One classmate, Abram (Michael Rubenfeld), escapes to America in 1937 and becomes a rabbi. He recites a long list of relatives lost to the Holocaust, but is nevertheless stricken when he learns of his classmates' horrific ends; near his own finale, however, his long list of descendants proves inspiring. Life is bleak, hard, raw — yet, much like this production, ultimately triumphs. —Mark Cofta

Through Nov. 13, $46-$56, Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., 215-546-7824, wilmatheater.org.

RA Friedman

UP THE STAIRS: Sara Yoko Howard as Anne Frank in EgoPo Classic Theatre's murky interpretation of her famous diary.

Few names stop a conversation like Anne Frank, whose tragic story — two years in hiding from the Nazis, only to be captured shortly before the liberation and die in a concentration camp at age 15 — requires reverential airspace. As a teenager, I read the diary — if you were a Jewish kid growing up in the '60s, you couldn't not — and was wracked with guilt. Anne's unimaginable fate made me seem lucky and weak in comparison. But I was also troubled that something about the diary — specifically Anne's maturity, equanimity and glowing warmth — didn't ring true.

Sure enough, that first published edition of the diary — the one that became internationally famous — had been edited under the watchful eye of Otto Frank, Anne's father and keeper of the flame, who made sure that areas of dissention, as well as Anne's growing sexuality, were tactfully elided. A subsequent edition restored the omitted material and gave a fuller sense of Anne as, well, a real live girl — but the damage was done, and it was the first version of the diary that served as source for this play, tinkered with by a group of hack writers who made Anne even saintlier.

Alas, this is where we have to start. The Diary of Anne Frank is a bad play, loaded with contrivance, stilted dialogue and cardboard characters. EgoPo Classic Theatre's production, like many recent ones, uses Wendy Kesselman's adaptation, which attempts with some success to offer a rounder portrait of Anne and a greater sense of context. But Kesselman can't fix the deeper problems.

In some ways, director Lane Savadove offers the most compelling version I've seen. The piece is beautifully staged and superbly lit (by Matt Sharp), and for once the sense of confinement — eight people sharing a small apartment — is palpable. Several moments of silence register with real eloquence, and they are sharpened by the tension and bickering that Savadove's company delivers with point. The actors deal honorably with the problematic writing (some better than others). Sara Yoko Howard's Anne grows in stature as the play progresses — in the early scenes, she's too hoydenish and plucky.

In the end, I'm not convinced that Anne Frank works as a play — or even that it should. As powerful as the story is, the gulf between authenticity and manipulation is troublingly murky. —David Anthony Fox

Through Nov. 6, $32, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-552-8773, egopo.org.