Overheard the other day backstage at the Music Box Theater, where the "new" The Diary of Anne Frank is playing: Someone to Natalie Portman, the young film star ("Everyone Says I Love You," "Beautiful Girls") who's making her Broadway debut as Anne: "Those two hours onstage are quite intense, don't you ever get out of it (character)?"
Portman: "Whenever I get out of it, I just look at Linda, because she's always in the moment."
"Oh, my," says a genuinely touched Linda Lavin. "Natalie said that! How sweet." Lavin says that Tony-winning James Lapine has directed The Diary Of Anne Frank like a film. "There's always behavior going on, even when the focus is on another group. When a key scene is lit, there's still life going on in the dimly lit areas. We need to fill that at all times and we're the kind of actors who want to. The connections we're making in those moments come from the months of closeness, respect, and affection we developed during the rehearsal process." Are these "unlit" moments as hard to play? "It's all the same to me," says Lavin. Laughing, she adds, "Life is difficult, performing is not."
This new adaptation by Wendy Kesselman of the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize and 1956 Tony-winning The Diary of Anne Frank -- by the noted, late husband and wife playwrights Frances Goodrich and Albert Hacket -- features never-before-released material from the diaries. Besides Portman and Lavin, the play co-stars George Hearn and Lori Wilner as the Franks and Harris Yulin as Mr. Van Daan. The Van Daans and their and son (Anne's love interest, played by Jonathan Kaplan), join the Franks in hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic during World War II.
What has aided the actors in the play is Lapine's advice that they put themselves in their characters' shoes. "We have no idea when we go up into that attic how long we'll be there," explains Lavin. "When I brag to Mr. Frank that I make the best latkes in the world, and he replies 'Invite us all next year,' I hope I will. Hope and humor go hand in hand. You don't think about and you must not play the end of this piece. You make dinner, have Hannukah, go to bed, get up, go to the w.c., have a fight with your husband. You go through the same moments of just living and all the irritations of being human that they did."
This approach, says Lavin, has audiences riveted and responding. "Especially the kids. At some matinees, we have a few hundred to a thousand! And they're great. They can't help but be moved, and we can feel that power. It helps that, by eighth grade, most kids are reading the book in school."
The "trick" for Lavin is to remain very focused. "There are moments when I 'go out' (of character) and I have to pull myself right back. Sometimes you are tempted, especially when you get a new response from the audience. You think, 'Boy, they liked that. I'll try something else on 'em.' And the next thing you know, you're overdoing it. Keeping clear and keeping simple is the task."
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