We Review: The Diary of Anne Frank
The Diary of Anne Frank @ the Intiman // through May 17 // // Tickets $10-$50 // Special talks and events on March 31, April 6, 10, 27, 28 and May 3
When this Seattlest was nine, we visited our grandparents in Brooklyn one weekend. While there, the synagogue hosted a book fair. Our grandparents, being a center of the temple community, went and took us with them.
We still hold a distinct memory of that day in our head. We’re in the midst of a cluster of kids at a table covered in colorful, oversized, too-young-for-us books. Though we love to read, nothing is interesting us and we’re somewhat tired of standing around, being polite to old people. Apropos of nothing, our grandmother hands us a small black paperback from a quieter end of the table. The book has a black and white picture of a smiling young girl on it. It's size and feel is that of a more advanced one than any we’ve yet been given.
“You have to read this Charlie, you’re old enough now,” our grandma says. Grandma never did anything like this before, which perked up our interest.
“What is it?”
“It’s the diary of a young Jewish girl who died in The Holocaust. She was only a bit older than you are now. It’s important that you read this.”
We did. When we finished Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl the first time, we went right back and read it again. Time and again over the years, we re-read that book which brought The Holocaust to life for us and awoke an obsession in us that continues to burn today.
With a history like that, we’ve obviously seen the movie and play version of The Diary of Anne Frank before. We watched it last night again, on opening night of the play at the Intiman.
The dramatized version of the story of the Franks living in hiding from the Nazis is essentially the same as Anne’s diary. The difference is that it is sculpted to be more dramatic. Its focus remains on Anne, who was a precocious thirteen when she went into hiding. Any information we get about the other residents of The Annex comes from her perspective. We watch as she grows progressively more weary of her situation and as all the eight inhabitants become less hopeful that they will make it out alive. By the second act, a budding romance between Anne and Peter Van Daan, the son of the other family in hiding with the Franks, becomes a focus of her life even as conditions in the rest of The Annex degrade. This being a true story, we assume you know how it all ends.
Overall, the Intiman’s production is quite good. Director Sari Ketter ably managed a number of delicate balances in her staging of the story. Most difficult among these was a need to get the audience to understand how crowded and cramped The Annex felt. Somehow she was able to keep all eight members of the cast onstage, in sight and moving the entire time without distracting our attention.
Ketter also turned this ensemble cast into a cohesive and believable Jewish family. Without using signs of their religion as a crutch, Ketter helped them create the tension, love, fun and difficulty of an extended Jewish family. During their Chanukah celebration we almost felt as if we were back in Brooklyn with our grandparents.
Though she was able to knit a family out of this cast, Ketter wasn’t able to bring a powerful performance to the stage in the role of Anne, played by Lucy DeVito (Danny DeVito’s daughter). DeVito was obviously cast because she can look like an awkward 13-year-old without being 13 (she’s 25). Unfortunately, she doesn’t have the acting chops or the life experience to pull off the role. She’s not comfortable with the play’s dated language and is unable to speak it naturally. She also only seems to have only one whiny level; when Peter tells her during a private moment two years into their ordeal, “You’ve changed,” DeVito hasn’t actually changed her depiction of Anne at all. She’s still a whiny 13-year-old girl. Only now, she seems to be trying to act like an adult.
Matthew Boston as Otto Frank, on the other hand, is brilliant. From the moment he walks on stage as a “cynical, old man” and the only survivor of the concentration camps of the eight Annex residents, he is obviously the best casting choice made. Talk about levels. Otto was forced to be the one who cheered everyone up, make the final decision on all living arrangements and was always the one to go down into the main building when a crisis presented itself. Boston transitions through each so smoothly and convincingly that we felt as if he had been through something similar in his life.
Also quite good was Shellie Shulkin as Mrs. Van Daan and Michael Winters as Mr. Van Daan. Though they have relatively minor roles in the play, when they have their moments to shine, each do and are entertaining and enjoyable to watch.
The Diary of Anne Frank is not an easy story to tell today. It’s one we’ve all heard before, and this dramatized version was written originally in the 1950s. Along with the simple fact that it’s a Hollywood (by which we mean cleansed) version of the story, the script tends toward sappy and overly romantic. Finally, although Jews and others keep the story of The Holocaust alive in an effort to “Never Forget,” the world continues to watch as progressively more horrific mass slaughters like those in Rwanda and Darfur take place, potentially inuring us to the tale of Anne and her family.
But Ketter and her cast at the Intiman make it worthwhile. They understand the importance of it and the need to keep telling it. We were left at the end, feeling again like that little boy finishing Anne’s diary for the first time, thinking how lucky we are not to be in those circumstances, and wishing for all the world, that no one ever has to go through such horrors again.
Production photos: Chris Bennion ©2008; 1) Anne Frank Ensemble, 2) Lucy DeVito as Anne Frank.
