Theater Review—

Updated ‘Anne Frank’ Is Still Gripping In Westport

By Julie Stern

WESTPORT — I was in high school when I saw the original Broadway production of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett’s The Diary of Anne Frank. Since that time it has been made into a film, and been part of the curriculum at numerous secondary schools, serving as a vehicle for making the Holocaust personal to millions of American adolescents.

Now Westport Country Playhouse is mounting a new adaptation of the play, done by Wendy Kesselman, as part of an ambitious educational program in conjunction with sixteen community organizations. Called Window on History: Perspectives on the Diary of Anne Frank, the goal is to get people talking about the play, and the parallels that it has to the contemporary world.

I’m not sure how many changes Ms Kesselman made in adapting the original work, which continues until October 30, but I suspect that it is now more intense, more claustrophobic, and more frightening than the original. That said, the words are still those of Anne Frank herself.

What is different is the dark, cramped atmosphere of John Ezell’s richly detailed set, capturing the narrow spaces, dim lighting, and primitive furnishings, in the dark moody colors of a Rembrandt painting. Similarly, the sound design, by Rusty Wandall, makes use of abrupt changes, frightening unidentifiable noises, incessant klaxons and vague rumblings, to add to the sense of being cut off from the outside world.

Most people in America today must be familiar with the story of the girl who kept a diary account of the two years she spent hiding in an attic, together with seven other people, before they were found by the Nazis and sent to their deaths. Despite the dire nature of their predicament, the story focuses on two themes: the coming of age of a young girl as she blossoms into womanhood, and the tensions that arise between people forced to live in such close proximity to one another.

Anne, her parents, and her older sister, Margot, have been given a refuge in the top floor of an annex to the jam company Mr Frank once owned (before the Nazis denied Jews the right to own businesses). Anne’s father agreed to take in the Van Daans and their son Peter as well, and a few months later, they accept one more fugitive, the disagreeable dentist, Mr Dussel.

Forced to be absolutely still for the ten hours each day that workmen are in the shop below, the secret inhabitants of the attic come to life at night, talking, quarrelling, teasing, and trying desperately to cope with the increasingly difficult conditions. While they crowd around the radio listening for hopeful news of the potential British invasion, they deal with diminishing food supplies, cold, worn out clothes and shoes, and gnawing fear.

Yet even in these circumstances the mercurial Anne, who was known as a chatterbox at school, is discovering the joys of love with the shy Peter. Her resentments of her mother and sister are tempered by a gentling new maturity. The awareness of this affects everyone in the group, so that their petty individual selfishness gives way to a little more empathy, even in the hardest of times. When Peter and Anne go up to the highest corner of the attic for a “date” the adults smile with a kind of fond indulgence.

Under Gerald Freedman’s direction, the acting is excellent. Molly Ephraim as Anne transforms before our eyes from a spoiled 13-year-old to a spirited young woman. Mitch Greenberg makes Otto Frank, her father, into a decent man of gentle moral stature, who serves as a leader and example for the others.

Lou Liberatore is wonderfully obnoxious as Mr Dussel. Mimi Lieber and Steve Vinovich make the  Van Daans into the couple you probably wouldn’t want to go on a long trip with, and yet they are humans, not awful people. Ari Brand is fine as the awkward Peter who finally is able to connect with the girl he called Mrs Quack Quack at the beginning. Monica West is compelling as the gallant Miep Gies, the company secretary who serves as their link to the outside world.

This is a good teaching play, to give young people a sense of what the Holocaust meant. There were quite a few in the audience, and they seemed enthralled.