Playwright: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Wendy Kesselman. At: Writers Theatre, Books on Vernon, 664 Vernon Ave., Glencoe. Tickets: 1-847-242-6000; www.writerstheatre.org; $35-$70. Runs through: June 28
The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the 20th-century’s most universally known literary works. It’s iconic like Hamlet: People know of it even if they haven’t read it or viewed it on stage or screen. The stage adaptation remains widely performed (especially by schools) and I imagine that reading the diary remains an adolescent rite of passage.
Like Hamlet, the challenge is to make it fresh. Hey, everyone knows that Hamlet dies and how Anne Frank ends. The original 1955 stage script was freshened in the late 1990s when the unedited original diary finally was published. The only surviving Frank family member, father Otto, had cut nearly a third of it when first published after World War II. The full text revealed that Anne could be petty and bitter and that she thought about her body and sexuality, having entered puberty while in hiding. Playwright Wendy Kesselman added some of the long-suppressed material to the 40-year-old script, and also altered the opening and closing narrative devices.
Even so, in essence The Diary of Anne Frank remains the same stage piece, and new productions have to make it fresh. You do that—as this new production does admirably—by forgetting you’ve ever seen the play or movie and approaching the characters with fresh eyes. Thus, Otto Frank (Sean Fortunato) is smart and good, but no longer the Jewish saint he has been made out to be. Thus, Anne’s mother, Edith ((Kristina Valada-Viars), no longer is a sourpuss as she often has been portrayed. Thus, the difficult dentist, Mr. Dussel (sterling veteran Kevin Gudahl) can smile and take secret pleasure when he witnesses the budding affection between Anne and Peter (Antonio Zhiurinskas). Thus, Anne herself (the dynamic Sophie Thatcher) can be obnoxious, loud and insensitive as the play begins. Such new takes on the characters make the work alive again, as skillfully staged by Kimberly Senior.
Collectively, Senior and her ensemble ratchet up the tension as the physical and emotional deprivations of two years of war, hiding and constant fear take their toll on the characters. It’s almost a relief when the Nazis tear them from hiding, because they seem headed toward a violent explosion. I’ve never seen a production which develops this tension so powerfully, in part achieved by running without intermission (100 minutes straight through). As Sartre wrote in No Exit, “Hell is other people.”
Jack Magaw’s busy and apropos small apartment setting puts the audience only inches from the characters in the Secret Annex, with overhead rafters giving substance to a design which necessarily must be somewhat schematic in order to depict several rooms. Costume (Nan Zabriskie) and prop (Nick Heggestad) details are excellent as well.