Review: THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK at Childsplay

Guest contributor David Appleford delivers a thoughtful and reverent assessment of Childsplay’s production of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK.

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK occupies an uneasy but unavoidable place in the theatrical canon. It’s one of those plays that most adults feel they already know, yet it continues to provoke arguments about what it gets right, what it softens, and what it dares not say. This accomplished Childsplay production of Wendy Kesselman’s revised adaptation reminds us that the question is no longer whether Anne Frank’s story matters, but, after 70 plus years on the stage, whether the play can still carry the full weight of its meaning.         

Now playing weekends at Herberger Theater Center in Phoenix until January 31, Kesselman’s adaptation, which once took a bruising critical reception when it appeared on Broadway in the late 1990s, has aged into a more defensible, even necessary correction to the original Goodrich and Hackett version. Where the 1955 play famously softened Anne’s anger and Jewish identity in favor of uplift, Kesselman reintroduces shadows.

The edges are sharper, the references to Jewish persecution are clearer, and moments of adolescent confusion, whether they’re emotional or intellectual, feel closer to the diary’s intelligence. The play no longer insists quite so eagerly on nobility, it allows resentment and small humiliations to take their place alongside courage.

What remains uncertain is whether these revisions can fully solve a more stubborn problem: whether THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, as a piece of theater, still works. For most audiences, the outcome is preordained, leaving suspense to be generated through atmosphere, rhythm, and the slow accumulation of dread. Director Jodie Weiss understands this challenge and meets it head-on, shaping the production with an ear for the material’s alternating currents of terror and fragile joy. Just as importantly, she remains attentive to how this story may be received by a younger Childsplay audience, one not necessarily arriving with foreknowledge of its ending.

The set, subtly lit by Tim Monson, carves the cramped living quarters of an Amsterdam building out of the Herberger Theater Center stage, suggesting confinement without lapsing into museum realism. A large backscreen projection quietly expands the world beyond the annex walls, offering historical perspective rather than commentary. Among Ricky Araiza’s images are an exterior view of the Anne Frank House on Prinsengracht, a stark photograph of Anne’s cramped sleeping quarters, Nazis parading triumphantly along the Champs-Élysées, and a newsreel of Dwight D. Eisenhower declaring D-Day a victory. There is also footage of Hitler himself, his image and recorded voice still viscerally repellent.

Not every artistic decision is as effective. The choice to forgo Dutch accents (common in earlier productions) removes a layer of musicality and cultural texture that once grounded the play. More consequential is the omission of the opening scene in which Otto Frank returns to the attic with Miep Gies to discover Anne’s diary. That moment once framed the story through memory and loss; without it, the play begins less as a reckoning than as a reenactment.

The performances, however, often do the work the text cannot. As Anne, Ariello Centeno strikes a thoughtful balance between adolescent restlessness and emerging self-awareness. She captures Anne’s buoyancy without reducing her to cloying perkiness, and her quieter moments suggest an intelligence still forming, still searching.

Isaac Greenland brings awkward charm to Peter Van Daan, while Debra K. Stevens gives Peter’s mother a brittle edge that will finally crack, underlining the all too obvious desperation of her situation which lands with painful clarity. Louis Farber matches her with a portrait of a man undone by shame and hunger.

Jeff Deglow’s Mr. Dussel, the dentist, avoids caricature. His outbursts may push toward excess, but they are consistently undercut by a fussy, whimsical grace that keeps the character human rather than merely irritating. Spencer Elizabeth Wareing lends a welcoming poise to sister Margot, while Bonnie Beus Romney’s Edith Frank effectively locates the character’s earthy resilience. Tony Blosser’s Otto Frank, patient and quietly dignified, serves as the production’s emotional anchor. He’s the calm center around which anxiety swirls.

What emerges most clearly, though, is how dependent this play remains on its Childsplay actors to supply the depth that Kesselman’s updated version only sketches. The supporting characters who assist in hiding the Franks and the Van Daans, Miep Gies (Amie Bjorklund) and Mr. Kraler (Beau Heckman), once conceived as broad types, now succeed in shaking off the attic dust; both performers make things feel natural and alive.  “We’re not heroes,” Miep states when thanked for her help. “We’re only doing what’s right.”  Plus, Drew Leatham rounds off the cast as the Nazi officer seen from time to time, lingering in the background like a continuing ominous presence, hanging over the action as a persistent shadow at the edges of the story.

Yet despite lingering reservations about the script, Kesselman’s revision restores material once excised, including Anne’s candid reflections on the specific persecution of Jews, moments that resist the universalizing tendencies of the original adaptation. These passages matter. They remind us that Anne Frank was not an abstract symbol of hope, but a Jewish girl with a sharp mind, complicated desires, and a clear understanding of the hatred closing in around her.

The production’s strongest gesture arrives at the end. In a revised final scene, Otto Frank addresses the audience directly, recounting, plainly and without adornment, the fates of those who shared the annex. The restraint is devastating. In refusing uplift, the moment honors the diary’s original intent more fully than many eloquent speeches ever could.

That intent is embedded even in the diary’s original Dutch title, Het Achterhuis, which translates into ‘The Secret Annex,’ a name Anne herself chose, written with the expectation that one day the account would be read, published, and understood. This Childsplay production, at its best, comes closest not to consoling us, but to fulfilling that hope.

Childsplay -- https://www.childsplayaz.org/ -- 480-921-5700

Venue: The Herberger Theater Center, Center Stage -- https://herbergertheater.org/ -- 222 E Monroe St, Phoenix, AZ -- 602-254-7399

Graphic credit to Childsplay