Mark Belnick, director of the Wasatch Theatrical Ventures production of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” has fashioned a title character who will seem familiar to patrons of chipper musicals. She is at times bored, exuberant, loving, arrogant, sensitive, brilliant, and ripe with possibilities.
Through much of Act One, Anne, played by Valerie Rose Lohman, is rarely quiet or still. Today, her kinetic energy and constant chatter might be deemed a disorder. In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, it communicated as an extraordinarily courageous and life-affirming response to unspeakable cruelty and terror.
Based on a 1997 adaption by Wendy Kesselman of the original 1956 play, this “Anne” takes place on a suitably small space at the NoHo Arts Center. The set design, by Adam Haas Hunter, uses three beds and a long kitchen table to convey feelings of unease, even claustrophobia.
We find it impossible to imagine that from 1942 to 1944, between the North Africa campaign and the Anglo/American landing at Normandy, the four-member Frank family, plus the three Van Daans and a dentist named Dussel hid from the Nazis in the storage attic of Otto Frank’s business.
Not long after the launch of D-Day, the news of which prompts an outburst of collective joy from the domed group, the Gestapo invades the space and forcibly removes the occupants. Only Otto Frank, the father, survived the war.
In notes that accompany this production, Kesselman states that the earlier play shied away from depicting the tragedy of the situation. She maintains, for example, that the original, twice-quoted out-of-context line by Anne, “I still believe people are really good at heart,” left audiences with a false sense of hope. She blames the times, more than the writers, arguing that “we didn’t want to hear about the concentration camps at that point.”
Certainly much has changed in the four decades between the two versions. This includes the release of extraordinary works by Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, the broadcast of the television miniseries “Holocaust,” the founding of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the publication of myriad historical works vividly depicting the conditions of people in the camps along with the Nazis’ planning and implementation of the murder of six million Jews.
The concern today, some 68 years after the liberation of the camps, and with the survivor population rapidly dwindling, is that younger people will know little or nothing of Hitler’s Final Solution. For that reason, staging “The Diary of Anne Frank” in the 21st century becomes an act of historical necessity.
Along with establishing a properly grim mood, the Wasatch Theatrical Ventures Production forces theatergoers to imagine how they would have behaved crammed with family and others into a small space for nearly two years. It’s a question that throughout history has confronted other targeted peoples in other countries, as well as frightened Americans in the 1950s, who built underground bunkers to survive what was once thought to be an inevitable nuclear war. In one regard, Anne was lucky; not only could she write—she loved to write. Her diary-keeping allowed her to see the others as not just co-habitants but material. Few plays convey as vividly the redemptive power of creativity.
The theme is expressed in Lohman’s performance, which though at times cute and perky, never annoys. Most important, the young actress recites Anne’s written words with the depth if feeling they deserve.
Georgan George gives us a downcast, somber Edith Frank, who is obviously not the source of her youngest daughter’s soaring spirit. On the other hand, we see in Jack Kandel’s good-hearted and sunny Otto where Anne derived her resolute optimism.
Jessica Richards’ offers a moving portrayal of Margot, Anne’s too sensitive sister. Susan Priver is convincing as a sexy, saucy Petronalla Van Daan; Nick Reilly is her fussy, repressed son, Peter, whom Anne eventually woos; Warren Davis captures the unpleasantness of Putti Van Daan, the most morally compromised of the characters; and Shelly Kurtz is fine as Dussel, the dentist. Rounding out the cast are Mindy Barker and Steven Scot Bono, playing Miep Gies and her husband, who risk their lives to bring food to the group.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” runs through August 25 at the NoHo Arts Center, 11136 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. Tickets are $25. To purchase tickets, call 323-960-7788, or go online at www.plays411.com.