Preview
THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
Theatre Calgary
Starring Meg Roe, Michael Hogan, Susan Hogan, Christopher Hunt and Harry Judge
Written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Wendy Kesselman
Directed by Ian Prinsloo
Runs until November 16
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical," wrote Anne Frank in her diary. "Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."
It’s a surprisingly profound perspective to find in the diary of any teenage girl. It’s even more astonishing considering it was written in 1944 while Frank and her family were hiding from the Nazis.
Theatre Calgary’s new production of The Diary of Anne Frank is an opportunity to see a true story that looks at the horror of the Holocaust through the eyes of a teenager.
In preparing for the role of Anne Frank, award-winning local actor Meg Roe has found that within the desperate situation faced by the young woman and her family, there is some familiar ground.
"When you read her diary it’s like reading some girl in Grade 8’s diary," says Roe, who won a Betty Mitchell Award for her performance in Proof last season.
"She was a loud, noisy, bouncy, precocious 13-year-old. She was kind of modern for her time – talking back and believing you should just say what you think. She had a love-hate relationship with everybody. So she was always getting into trouble."
Even as Anne records the terror of being caught and the knowledge that her friends are being taken away, she is growing up and experiencing what every adolescent girl experiences. She "is meeting Peter (Van Daan) and having her first kiss, getting her period and fighting with her mom, and having too many beans for dinner,’ says Roe. "It’s about a young woman finding herself."
As many readers know, Frank was a German-Jewish teenager living in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In 1942, three weeks after her 13th birthday, she and her family were forced to seek refuge in the Secret Annex, an attic hiding-place above her father’s office, to avoid being deported.
For the next two years, they led a desperate life, trying to keep from being discovered. Sadly, the end came in August 1944, when they were betrayed to the Gestapo and arrested. The family was sent to different concentration camps, with Anne and her sister Margot ending up in Bergen-Belsen. Only the father, Otto Frank, survived the war. When he returned to Amsterdam, he found his neighbours had saved Anne’s diary.
Published in 1947, the diary quickly became a classic and is still widely read to this day. It was adapted for the Broadway stage by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett in 1955, winning both the Tony Award for best play and the Pulitzer Prize.
The first edition of Anne Frank’s dairy omitted almost 30 per cent of the original text – negative views of family and friends were edited and any mention of sexuality was toned down for a 1940s audience. Following the death of Otto Frank, a new, definitive edition of the diary, restoring the omitted material, was published in 1995, sparking fresh interest in Anne Frank. Drawing on this edition, Wendy Kesselman created a new adaptation of the play, which led to a successful Broadway revival in 1997. Theatre Calgary is using this new version of the play for its production.
For audiences accustomed to violent, graphic Holocaust films like Schindler’s List and The Pianist, The Diary of Anne Frank is a dramatically different experience.
"We have images of the Holocaust from the movies, of what it was like," says Roe. "We all walk in the theatre knowing that. This play goes in a different direction. The play isn’t about (the Franks) dying. It’s important because they did, but what’s more important about them is that they lived those two years and all the life that burbled out of them. It’s not a play about dying – it’s a play about how to live."
Although Anne’s situation is extreme, the 24-year-old Roe finds her character easy to identify with.
"Physically, she went through puberty in the attic," she says. "Can you imagine what that was like? You’re 13 years old. You’re stuck in an attic – with your mom – for two whole years during that hellish time. That alone would be enough to drive you insane, but (also) knowing that if you went outside, you’d be killed."
Roe is aware that the Holocaust remains difficult to deal with, despite the many movies and documentaries on the subject. "It’s still a delicate part of our history, to be touched gently, in the sense that there are people still alive who lived (through) that. We should not forget that."
"We have to glean from it some message," she adds. "I believe Anne’s message: People are good and, when we figure that out, (the world) will be a great place." |
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