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by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett, adapted by Wendy Kesselman, directed by Jillian Keiley

Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford

May 28-October 10, 2015

Anne Frank: “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart”

The play by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett based on The Diary of Anne Frank is receiving its first production at the Stratford Festival since 2000.  The innovative design by Bretta Gerecke and the acting from the entire cast are very effective.  Anne Frank’s Diary, of course, is most effective in its original form, but anyone wishing to see a fine production of the diary adapted to the stage will be hard pressed to find one staged with more earnestness than this.

As in 2000, Stratford is presenting Wendy Kesselman’s 1997 adaptation of the Goodrich and Hackett’s 1955 play.  Kesselman introduces the topic of Anne’s physically coming of age while in hiding that the 1955 play omitted.  Even in Kesselman’s adaptation, the play is necessarily episodic, based as it is on a diary, and therefore not inherently dramatic.  Though Anne’s diary entries begin on June 14, 1942, the play begins on July 6, 1942, when Anne and her family went into hiding from the Nazis with the van Pels family (renamed “van Daan" in the diary) in the annex of Anne’s father’s company’s building in Amsterdam.  Anne’s last diary entry before the family was discovered by the Gestapo was on August 1, 1944, but the play provides an epilogue by Anne’s father Otto, the only surviving member of those in hiding, who relates what happened after their discovery, arrest and deportation to concentration camps.

The play is thus a portrait of two families who because of their religion are forced to hide in the very city where they once had been free.  The action documents the tensions of so many people living confined in close proximity as well as the constant fear of discovery that never allows anyone to relax.  Looked at objectively the play is really a series of vignettes of everyday life.  The disputes over who gets to use the single bathroom when or why the food is the same every day are not inherently interesting.  What makes this picture of everyday life significantly different is that it has to be lived in secret with death as the penalty for being found out.   

To emphasize the theme of invisibility, Bretta Gerecke has devised a set that looks merely like three walls of slats in an empty space.  All the features of the set are ingeniously hidden in these walls – the second floor room of the van Pels family, the kitchen and Anne’s bedroom – can be pulled out of these plain walls when needed and pushed back in.  At the same time, the fact that the walls are made of slats instead of being solid suggests the precarious existence of the hidden families who are always on the verge of being found out.  This is particularly noticeable when director Jillian Keiley has lighting designer Leigh Ann Vardy shine moving lights through the slats from behind, the lights beaming through the slats showing how vulnerable the annex really is as a hiding place.

Keiley make two odd decisions that are not helpful in telling the story.  She begins the play by having all the cast members, in a line in front of the set, each say something about what they did when they were 13, the age Anne is when the story starts.  Given that the play, or Anne’s Diary, will likely be taught in schools, this may help students who didn’t know it realize that actors are people, too, and once were teenagers.  Keiley probably also wants to set up a contrast between the safety we take for granted in growing up versus the danger that surrounded Anne’s youth.  Unfortunately, very few of the actors ever mention this contrast when telling their anecdotes and the message does not quite get through. 

More disruptive is Keiley’s decision to have an intermission.  Wendy Kesselman in the introduction to her adaptation specifically states that the show should run its 90 minutes without an intermission.  This makes sense because we as an audience will be trapped without respite with the Franks just as they were trapped and the growing tension stemming from our knowledge that they will be discovered will not be allowed to dissipate.  The intermission, of course, ruins that tension which the cast has to work hard to rebuild for the second act.  Had Keiley not added the long unnecessary introduction of actor’s reminiscences, the play would have been only 90 minutes long and thus not require a break. 

Keiley’s approach is also reverential to the point of suffocation.  Rather than having Sara Farb, the actor playing Anne, read excerpts of her diary, Keiley has the entire cast share this duty holding the text in front of them as if they were reading from a holy scripture.  A choir sings Jonathan Munro’s lovely wordless music from behind the set.  While Anne’s Diary is an important document that did miraculously survive the  destruction of the war, Keiley’s venerational attitude toward the text contrasts rather too much with the actual banality of the everyday life Anne records.  The point of diary is how it records that life from the point of view of a girl on the verge of adulthood who somehow maintains all the hope of someone her age despite the horrific times she lived in.  Keiley’s approach makes us view Anne as a kind of saint whereas her Diary continually emphasizes her utter humanity. 

Joseph Ziegler’s Otto Frank, Anne’s father, is a pillar of stability among the adults.  Like everyone else, Ziegler’s character shows the strain of such claustrophobic living, but at the same time we see how Otto consciously summons the courage to remain calm when so many of the others give way to their fears and thus risk jeopardizing everyone’s safety.  Though Margot is the favourite of his two daughters, one touching aspect of the play is how Ziegler shows how Otto comes to realize the virtue of Anne’s ability to slough off fear and to live life as best she can.

In contrast Lucy Peacock’s Edith, Anne mother, is constantly on edge and exhausts herself because of her constant anxiety.  The van Daans provide a further contrast to the Franks.  Whereas Mr. Frank is strong and steady, Mr. van Daan is weak and fearful.  Whereas Mrs. Frank is anxious, Mrs. van Daan seems more concerned about herself than what is happening in the outside world.  While the Franks are linked by a deep love, we sense immediately that all is not right between the van Daans.  Yanna McIntosh is unafraid to make Mrs. van Daan unlikeable.  Her character is imperious where such an attitude is inappropriate, and worse she flirts with Mr. Frank in front of Mrs. Frank as if she is so used to demeaning her husband she can’t stop herself when the circumstances have changed.  Kevin Bundy’s plays Mr. van Daan as a skittish milquetoast.  He makes his character’s descent into theft unbearably humiliating.   

André Morin reveals Peter as the most sensible of the van Daan family.  Morin carefully details Peter’s progress from distancing himself from the ebullient Anne to gradually and shyly falling in love with her.  Playing Miep Gies, the Franks’ and van Daans’ prime outside helper, Maev Beaty radiates warmth, compassion and concern.

If we set aside Keiley’s odd directorial choices and the venerational atmosphere she gives the play, we see that she has drawn such intense, committed ensemble work from the entire cast that it could hardly be bettered.  Those who feel the need to see the events of Anne Frank’s Diary brought to life on stage will be satisfied.  What is most moving about the play, however, does not appear in the diary because they are events that happened afterwards.  These are terrible fates meted out to all the characters we see but Otto Frank himself, who is left to relate them to us.  Anne Frank (1929-45) died at age 15 of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, separated from her parents and a few days after her sister Margot’s death from the same disease. 

            

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Photos: (from top) Sara Farb as Anne Frank; Kevin Bundy, Yanna McIntosh, Lucy Peacock, Shannon Taylor, Joseph Ziegler and Sara Farb; Joseph Ziegler as Otto Frank. ©2015 David Hou.

For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.