By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
photo by Tim Fuller
Anne (Anna Lentz, left) shares a happy moment with her sister Margot (Devon Prokopek).
Thank you, David Ira Goldstein, for directing “The Diary of Anne Frank” at Arizona Theatre Company. The tone, the pacing, the look, the sound effects, every detail of the powerfully poignant piece is in place and working beautifully.
If “beautiful” is a word that can be used in this painful reminder of every life that was extinguished by the Nazi regime. All people of a certain age know about the diary 13-year-old Anne Frank kept while she was in hiding during the closing years of World War II.
We remember because even in her fraught world of furtive survival she never lost her optimistic faith in human nature.
What we forget about are the lives of those others that swirled around her – the five adults plus Anne's sister and a teen boy three years Anne's senior.
The play, as adapted by Wendy Kesselman from the original by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, presents that life in all its desperation and bursts of pettiness.
Sharing two small rooms that seem to get smaller by the minute were Anne (Anna Lentz), her father Otto (Steve Hendrickson), her mother Edith (Naama Potok), her sister Margot (Devon Prokopek), Mr. Van Daan (John G. Preston), Mrs. Van Daan (Ann Ariva), their son Peter (Gus Cuddy), and the dentist Mr. Dussel (Michael Santo).
These two rooms and the attic were secretly walled off in a factory that continued operating throughout the war. During daytime weekday hours everyone had to be completely quiet. Only after work and on weekends could they move around and talk freely.
Anne and the dentist took turns sleeping in the same bed each day. Everyone shared a single bathroom. Getting sick was a constant fear.
As the pressure mounted when weeks turned into months and the months become almost two years, each person suffered in a different way. And all the time, though Anne was often not the center of attention, of course she was. When others were angry, your eye searched for Anne in a corner, wondering what she was thinking and writing.
The story has a number of humorous moments, too, as any opportunity to warrant a laugh among these refugees in hiding was welcomed.
But for Anne it was more. Lentz portrayed her as a compulsively positive person whose strategy for survival was always finding something to be happy about. It became a game of wits for her, really, as their captivity continued beyond endurance, food rations got worse and there was no patience left in anybody.
One enormous emotional boost for Anne was the gradually growing romantic attraction she shared with Peter, which she also wrote about.
Goldstein as director has measured out all these developments meticulously. The more we marveled over Anne's survival skills, the more painful loomed that inevitable ending.
When their hiding place is finally discovered as the war is almost over, all eight of them are taken away by a German soldier and two civilian sympathizers.
A few minutes later Otto Frank, the sole survivor, then steps back onstage. Moving slowly he finds Anne's diary on the floor and offers a eulogy that will break your heart.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” runs through May 12, with performances at various times Tuesdays through Sundays in the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. Tickets are $41-$63. Running time is approximately two hours 15 minutes, with intermission. For details and reservations, arizonatheatre.org or 622-2823.
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