MARGOT FRANK: THE DIARY OF THE OTHER YOUNG GIRL to Debut in New Jersey

[ClumsyDude15]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 10:12am

I just read about this brand new musical opening in New Jersey next month. It's about Anne Frank's sister and she kept a diary and it's a musical comedy!

It's gotten a lot of local press and even got some major love from Talkin Broadway.

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/allthatchat/d.php?id=1544107
http://www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/032708/njPlayShowsAnneFrank.html

It seems pretty awesome and sounds really funny. :]

And I mean, where else will get you get a tap dance number with Jewish celebrites!?



MARGOT FRANK: THE DIARY OF THE OTHER YOUNG GIRL on MYSPACE

Updated On: 3/28/08 at 10:12 AM

[WaltSummersPI]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 10:17am

I'm looking forward to seeing this too, but since when is a press release "major love"? :)

[ClumsyDude15]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 10:18am

Hey, it's major and I'm sure the people who made the show find it to be love.

Plus. I'm on a Legally Blonde kick and I can't stop using words like "major love" or "mad props"

Updated On: 3/28/08 at 10:18 AM

Posted: 3/28/08 at 10:21am

I really hope this is a success. I can't wait for "Otto Frank: My Girls Can Write!" or maybe "MR. Dussell: I Was Hungry!" Petra Van Daam has a story to tell too: "You Can Have My Fur Coat When You Pry It From My Cold Dead Hands!"

Or for the Spring Awakening crowd "Peter Van Daam: I Did 'Em Both."

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 10:50am

Coming soon: MIEP! OH, MIEP!

Updated On: 3/28/08 at 10:50 AM

[WaltSummersPI]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 10:52am

Eva Braun: No, Really, I Found Hitler Attractive

[broadwayfan7]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 10:52am

Looking forward to this!

Posted: 3/28/08 at 11:03am

I Forgot about Miep! I can't wait to hear her first act finale "OH! I forgot the damn pencils, now I have to go all the way back to the store!"

[Morgaine885]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 1:48pm

This sounds absolutely fascinating, to tell you the truth. I'm a bit put-off by making a musical comedy out of Anne Frank's story, but this seems to be a completely different take on things.

Is anybody we might be familiar with in the cast?

[tourboi]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 2:20pm

Does anyone else find a musical comedy from the stories of any of these people to be distasteful?

[Morgaine885]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 2:31pm

I dunno...they seem to have a point with what they're trying to do. It doesn't sound like any kind of slapstick humor.


"Although sometimes hilarious, the show is a serious attempt to ponder the voices silenced by the Holocaust and history, said Mooney.

“Eleven million people died in the Holocaust and Anne Frank is the only person [many] people can name,” she said. “She put a human face on the tragedy, but what about the other 11 million? Or even about the other people in the attic? If we did this as a serious story, the message might be lost.”

As an example of one of those others, Mooney reflects on Pfeffer, one of the eight people hiding in the Secret Annex in an Amsterdam office building. Depicted in Anne’s diary as the bumbling Albert Dussel, Pfeffer is the subject of a long-standing controversy over whether he was portrayed unfairly.

“Dr. Pfeffer was a cultured, educated man whose reputation was ruined” by the diary, said Mooney. “His wife had a nervous breakdown over his character in the diary.”"

[dominique]

Posted: 3/28/08 at 5:09pm

Yeh, I think it's all in how it's done.

[NativeNewYorker]

Posted: 4/4/08 at 2:31pm

It is premiering on Wednesday. It's getting quite a bit of buzz locally and the cast is extremely hyped-up for it!

[NativeNewYorker]

Posted: 4/8/08 at 2:36pm

Opens tomorrow...

[NativeNewYorker]

Posted: 4/17/08 at 10:59am

http://media.www.pioneertimeswpu.com/media/storage/paper756/news/2008/04/14/News/margot.Frank.The.Diary.Of.The.Other.Young.Girl-3329064.shtml?refsource=collegeheadlines



Margot Frank: The Diary of the Other Young Girl"
CHRIS NESI
Issue date: 4/14/08 Section: News
PrintEmail Article Tools Page 1 of 1 It was nearly impossible to avoid seeing posters all over campus for this year's winner of the New Jersey Playwrights Contest, "Margot Frank: The Diary of the Other Young Girl." When I first noticed the posters, and the prominent words, "a new musical comedy," I thought this couldn't possibly be a parody of Anne Frank. I was wrong.

It was actually a fairly brilliant and completely original take on the famous story of the Frank sisters hiding out from the Nazis in an apartment in Amsterdam with the Van Pels family. The show began with a high school drama class bickering over the casting for the play within the play, which was to be the traditional theatrical version of The Diary of Anne Frank. High school student Min-go, the cast's lone Asian performer questioned the logic of allowing Jewish students to portray Nazis, and in her words, a flaming homosexual to play the lead romantic interest, but not allowing her, a Chinese-American to play the title role. The students and teacher hilariously thwart her efforts, and soon grow tired of her grandstanding. This is where the play took a turn for the seriously odd: A sandbag falls on Min-go from above, and she falls unconscious to the floor, setting the stage for a totally bizarre play to take place in Min-go's unconscious state.

This was a true group cast effort. Each performer dutifully rearranged the set before, after, and even during action on stage, moving around furniture and placing props where they belong without drawing excessive focus from the characters speaking. There was a lot of physical comedy in the performance, people were falling out of chairs, and Peter Van Pels was repeatedly beaten with a fish. This unique performance was laugh out loud funny at times. The usually contemplative, sensitive Anne Frank that we know from her diary has been replaced by a snotty, petulant brat, portrayed frighteningly realistically by Hilary Goldman.

When I said the play was weird, I meant just that. At one point, the Marx Brothers, Barbara Streisand, Sammy Davis Jr., Moses, and Jesus Christ himself were all literally on the stage dancing and singing about their respective rank among the most famous Jews of all time. According to the play, Jesus was number one, Anne Frank was number two.

All weirdness and borderline psychedelic imagery aside, the play's central theme was shining the spotlight on the lesser noticed people among us. Margot Frank represented the girl living in the shadow of her one day legendary sister Anne. According to the play, Margot was actually the one who kept that brilliant diary during the war. Anne plagiarized Margot's diary word for word, and claimed it as her own, thereby relegating Margot to her mostly forgotten place in history.

I had a wonderful time at Margot Frank. The writers of the play and the music, Lori Mooney and Diana Rissetto should be praised for their daring, and irreverent take on a very somber subject. It is not easy to walk that thin line between shocking humor and offensiveness, but both Mooney and Rissetto did so deftly, and with unflinching courage.

[ClumsyDude15]

Posted: 4/17/08 at 12:19pm

I went to the show and I know this may sound really odd, I SWEAR Cheyenne Jackson was there and he was giving the show a standing ovation. Weird, but I SWEAR on my 'DU Crew membership it was him.

[EverythingIsRENT]

Posted: 4/17/08 at 9:24pm

bumping cause this show was FABULOUS!! I can't wait for the NYC premier! Cheyenne WAS there, and he loved it too =) YAY MARGO!!

[Cindy Shields2]

Posted: 5/2/08 at 11:26am

SEND AN APPEAL TO MYSPACE

I urge all those interested in the future of this musical to contact MySpace customer service to respectfully request that they reinstate the account "MARGOT FRANK: THE DIARY OF THE OTHER YOUNG GIRL" which was unceremoniously REMOVED! One can only speculate WHY (perhaps due to objections by people who know nothing about the production yet allow themselves to become enraged by the subject, sadly censoring the arts out of sheer ignorance?).

Congratulations to Lori Mooney, Diana Rissetto and EVERYONE involved with this project and the production at WPU!