Anne Frank was 13 years old in June, 1942, when she and her family went into hiding in an attic space in an office building in Amsterdam. They were hiding from the Nazis who had conquered the Netherlands and were busy putting Jews to death, as they did in all the countries they overran. The family lived inn this cramped space, while she kept a diary, until September, 1944, when German soldiers found the hideout. Anne, her sister, Margot, and their mother, Edith, died in concentration camps over the next six months. The war in Europe ended in June, 1945, and her father, Otto, got back to Amsterdam and found the diary.
Its travails didn't match those of its author, but it has gone through a lot. A book, a movie, several plays, many rewrites and revisions, books and articles about it, its legitimacy, its accuracy, its purpose, its author, the father of its author. The version of "The Diary of Anne Frank" that opened last night at the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis is the most recent one, largely rewritten by Wendy Kesselman from the original play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, reportedly more authentic than its on-stage predecessors.
With a marvelous three-level set by John Ezell dominating the action, and Steve Woolf's painstaking, careful, gentle direction, the play unfolds slowly, with the family arriving in its hiding place as the Germans start to round up Jews for work camps and death camps.
John Rensenhouse stands out as Otto Frank, a wealthy businessman who has brought family and friends to an attic provided by a non-Jewish woman, Miep Gies, who worked for Frank's spice company for many years. She died just over a month ago at the age of 100. He loves his children and his wife, stands and shares with his old friend and partner, even supports a cranky, mean, egotistical dentist (fine work by Gary Wayne Barker) who lurks in hope of catching Anne in a compromising situation, preferably an embrace with young Peter Van Daan, played with appealing innocence by Andrew Stroud.
The Van Daans, Frank's partner and Peter's parents, bring a blustering Colonel Blimp portrayal from Peter Van Wagner, with Peggy Billo highly effective as his unhappy, status-conscious wife, dreaming of her childhood.
Ann Talman and Maggie Wetzel, as Edith and Margot Frank, respectively, do well as the family balance to Rensenhouse and Lauren Orkus, as the title character. As Anne, she's a typical adolescent, bouncing off the walls with ideas and emotions, a bundle of confusion as she begins the transition from girl to woman, eager to find out what life is all about, greatly interested in her developing body and the young man upstairs, scribbling passionately in her diary. And yet, I found little core in all this action, and too much of "Junior Miss" in her histrionics. Much of the time, it was as if she had practiced the emotions and was showing them to the audience, one at a time. Anne Frank was one of the 20th century's most tragic heroines, a child who taught many of us what evil is all about. Theaters need to produce "The Diary of Anne Frank," a difficult play to watch and think about, so that we do not forget why she died and the circumstances of her death.
A production of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis at the Loretto-Hilton Center, through March 7
–Joe