NOCCA Stage presents ‘Diary of Anne Frank’
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Reviewer, “Steppin’ Out,” WYES-TV
Jewish historians will note that of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the world did not put a specific face on but a few. As to survivors, there is Elie Wiesel, the impassioned voice of reason amidst madness and the late Simon Wiesenthal, whose efforts to expose and capture the enemies of the Jewish people were extremely effective. But when it comes to victims, the image of the smiling brunette teenager from Amsterdam who wrote entries in a diary while in hiding from the Nazis – Anne Frank– is arguably the most famous.
The voice of a young teenager coming of age in a world gone mad.
When classes disband and summer rolls into the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (NOCCA), the state school for the arts, the faculty and several gifted students open up their campus for what has become an annual cornucopia of stage offerings. In the past the students and faculty have presented such impressive works as “Violet,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and last year’s award-winning “The Trip to Bountiful.”
The seamless nature of the faculty in the way they integrate with the young student performers is staggering. It is a compliment that many of these gifted, young actors oftentimes outshine their much older, more experienced adult partners, which, given their length and breadth of experience, is not an easy feat.
The summer’s lone offering from the NOCCA Stage Company is the riveting and still very much pertinent “The Diary of Anne Frank.” The play is liberally dramatized from the actual diary entries of the most famous victim of the Holocaust that were discovered by her father Otto Frank after the war. Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett were responsible for transforming the powerful words of a teenager coming of age in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands into a drama that built tension as it went along.
The names of all of the real life victims were changed and the personalities of several of the characters were made more dramatic for the purposes of moving the piece along. In some cases when fiction made more dramatic sense than what history would attest to as truthful, the fictional retelling was used.
Director Janet Shea took great pains to follow the script as closely as possible, but made well-conceived theatrical choices for the staff when necessary.
The somber facts of the play are still true to the story. Of all the adults and children hidden away during the war the lone survivor was Otto Frank. That much is made evident at the beginning of the play when we meet Otto Frank (Silas Cooper) along with two friends – Miep (recent NOCCA graduate Holly Setoon) and Mr. Kraler (veteran performer Joseph Ridolfo) – who had helped secret him and his family for nearly three years, supplying food and other necessities.
During the course of the play we meet Anne’s other family members: her mother wonderfully portrayed by local actress Diana Shortes and her sister Margot, played by first-year NOCCA student Mary Frances Candies. These actresses are quite impressive, especially Shortes,
The remaining cast of characters are all exceptional. Faculty members Amy Alvarez and Blake Coheley portray self-obsessed Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan, whose son Peter (recent NOCCA grad Austin Alleman) becomes an interest of attachment for the title character, played with wonderful exuberance by Benjamin Franklin High School-NOCCA junior student Mariah Guillmette.
Michael Cahill portrays Mr. Dussel, a man whose character can be mean-spirited and manipulative. He is highly dismissive of his teenage roommate, Anne, whom he regards as a nuisance, despite the fact he is there only because he is in the Franks’ good graces.
Shea insisted that the play end on a serious note, so don’t expect to congratulate the actors at show’s end for their stellar performances. The dead remain the dead and only the survivors of the war are seen before the final curtain. Shea is emphasizing the finality of the Holocaust through the reality of her actors. The play has no curtain calls, but the result for the play is that it spells curtains for almost all of the actors.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” continues on Friday and Saturday nights at 7:30 with Sunday matinees as 2:00 until June 24. For more information call 504-940-2875.
