Of the eight impressive productions I’ve seen thus far in the Stratford Festival of Canada’s 2015 season, the only one I cannot recommend is The Diary of Anne Frank. The play is a deeply moving presentation of the amazing human document saved from the tragic story of a real young victim of the Nazi Holocaust. Stratford’s cast is close to ideally chosen to bring the story and characters to life, and much of their performance is remarkably authentic and affecting.
True, the real Anne Frank’s father survived and made some censoring alterations to her diary, and the original playwrights, as well as their more recent adaptor, somewhat changed an adolescent girl’s personal history into an effective drama for generations to follow. But the resulting honest play has been adored, awarded, influential, and powerfully affecting since the end of the last century.
This version trusts neither the original material nor the presentation of a play at all to reach an audience. Instead, it prefaces the drama with inane personal commentary by performers, including those who play no role in the story, and then defuses the play entirely by following it with a requiem service. Mr. Frank’s devastating final speech does end the performance, but not until well after the actual drama is over and the dirges are sung.
About all director Jillian Kelley could have done to undercut The Diary of Anne Frank and foul its effect more would have been to come out after Mr. Frank’s shattering conclusion, and lecture us on why her personal irrelevances are superior to dramatic art.
Bretta Gerecke’s set is all wooden planks, mostly assembled horizontally, evidently to sabotage any idea of a realistic structure to resemble the hiding place of the people in the story. Even so, several of the play’s strongest moments are so well played here that they affect us. Sara Farb does look and often sound somewhat older than Anne lived to be, but she is an actress who is wonderfully skilled in presenting her character’s genuine nature and feelings so honestly that the barrier of performance is removed, and we are brought directly into her world.
Lucy Peacock is heartbreakingly troubled and real and amusing and tragic as Anne’s mother, perhaps the most complex and centrally necessary character in the group. With her usual command of the stage, Yanna McIntosh layers the troubled Mrs. van Daan’s sympathetic and unsympathetic qualities into a rich characterization. And one of the most authoritative and utterly honest actors I’ve ever seen, Joseph Ziegler, is the ideal Mr. Frank. But the whole cast is more than accomplished and still undone by the educational assemblies at the beginning and end of the performance.
