{"id":89283,"date":"2025-08-22T14:50:49","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T19:50:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=89283"},"modified":"2025-08-22T14:50:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T19:50:49","slug":"anne-frank-superstar-a-satirical-musical-reimagines-the-holocaust-victim-as-a-symbol-of-wokeness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/anne-frank-superstar-a-satirical-musical-reimagines-the-holocaust-victim-as-a-symbol-of-wokeness\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Anne Frank, Superstar\u2019? A satirical musical reimagines the Holocaust victim as a symbol of wokeness."},"content":{"rendered":"

By JOSEPH STRAUSS<\/p>\n

(JTA) \u2014 What exactly is \u201cSlam Frank,\u201d the purported hip-hop musical that reimagines the Holocaust\u2019s most famous victim as a pansexual Latinx girl today?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Is it a real show with real actors and real songs constructing a real story for real audiences? Or is it an elaborate social media prank designed to pillory the left and rage-bait the right? Or could it be both?<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s Instagram account, its primary engine of promotion, has stoked the confusion. <\/p>\n

Co-creator Andrew Fox posts snippets of songs, rapping in character as Anne Frank \u2014 or Anita Franco, as she\u2019s named in the play \u2014 about being \u201cstraight from the barrio\u201d and calling people \u201cgringos.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStorytellers like me are trying to make the Holocaust diverse,\u201d Fox said in one Instagram post. \u201cBecause you watch movie after movie after movie and everybody looks like this \u2014 white, white, white,\u201d he remarked, pointing to a still from \u201cSchindler\u2019s List.\u201d<\/p>\n

The posts range from sneak peeks of the show to broader, seemingly tongue-in-cheek commentary. Fox, who is Jewish, frequently posts on the account about being a Latinx artist (through his father\u2019s Ecuadorian third wife) and his efforts to \u201cdecolonize Broadway.\u201d Another post satirizing inclusivity issues decries the fatphobia of both Broadway theaters and Nazi concentration camps. (\u201cNeither of these environments were built to accommodate people of size.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Fox and the \u201cSlam Frank\u201d team have built a social media campaign that is, like the premise of the show itself, inclusive to a fault. Many don\u2019t know what to make of it, or whether this build-up is leading toward a real production.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou guys are joking right?\u201d one Instagram user commented. \u201cI genuinely can\u2019t tell in this political landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t actually think that making this is a good idea,\u201d another user pleaded in a DM.<\/p>\n

Among the at-least dozens, and often hundreds of comments on each \u201cSlam Frank\u201d post, you can be sure to find commenters asking something along the lines of, Is this real??<\/p>\n

But lately, as the show has opened workshops to critics and sold out the first eight nights of its upcoming Off-Broadway run, its devoted but somewhat befuddled fan base has started to trust that there might really be a full performance ahead \u2014 one that bears out its billing as \u201cThe Diary of Anne Frank\u201d meets \u201cHamilton\u201d meets \u201cSouth Park.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a real musical,\u201d Fox said in a recent phone interview. \u201cI think that once the website went up, and then the tickets went up for sale, and then we actually had the concert [in June], everybody kind of went, \u2018Oh, we get it now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anne Frank’s diary has been adapted for film, television, opera, Broadway and as a graphic novel, but never as a sendup of the discourse around inclusivity. Above, the cast from the 1958 film adaptation, \u201cThe Diary of Anne Frank.\u201d (20th Century Fox)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Anne Frank\u2019s diary has been adapted for film, television, opera, Broadway and as a graphic novel, but never as a sendup of the discourse around inclusivity. Inspiration for the play came from what Fox and co-creator Joel Sinensky, who is also Jewish, were seeing online a few years ago. An earnest social media discourse in 2022 \u2014 which followed a similar one from the previous year \u2014 asked whether Anne Frank, despite having been murdered by the Nazis, benefited from \u201cwhite privilege.\u201d The debate that followed focused on whether identity politics had gone too far. That discourse also served the argument, discussed in works like David Baddiel\u2019s \u201cJews Don\u2019t Count,\u201d that today\u2019s progressive identity politics care less about antisemitism than about other forms of discrimination. <\/p>\n

Around the same time the Anne Frank debates went viral, Fox said, he was also noticing \u201call these instances where identity politics issues, and theater representation issues, would twist back on themselves and bend and morph. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I just kept going, \u2018There\u2019s something interesting here,\u2019\u201d Fox said. \u201cAnd if I take this logic \u2014 \u2018Well, you have to make people more marginalized! There\u2019s a marginalization hierarchy!\u2019 \u2014 if I take it to its extreme, it starts to break. And I want to see it break so I can understand it better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Is Fox an anti-woke conservative? Or a liberal who thinks progressives hurt themselves by going too far? He says he\u2019s keeping his own politics private, and doesn\u2019t like when playwrights and writers \u201ccome out of the closet politically, in any direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce people know which direction you\u2019re coming from, they can decide whether to dismiss you or not,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n

Like \u201cSouth Park,\u201d which before its recent anti-MAGA turn enjoyed skewering liberal pieties, Fox and Sinensky are running with the idea of being so inclusive that it becomes offensive \u2014 like, for example, when they posted on Instagram that they \u201cintend to maintain fully segregated mezzanine access to ensure safety of BIPOC,\u201d the popular acronym for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.<\/p>\n

The pair have built out a cast of characters based on the real-life Jews who hid in the Secret Annex in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam. That includes the pansexual Latinx Anita Franco, Peter van Daan as a non-binary dancer and Mister van Daan, the play\u2019s only cisgender heterosexual male, who is described as \u201cliterally worse than the Nazis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show is framed as an ultra-progressive regional theater company staging an adaptation of Anne Frank\u2019s diary. According to YouTube theater critic Matthew Hardy, who caught the concert reading in June, the show starts off with \u201ca hilarious monologue from the straight white producer\/director\u201d of the theater group, who is \u201cearnestly explaining\u201d the concept of his show \u2014 a diverse, race-swapped version of Anne Frank\u2019s Holocaust story \u2014 as if \u201cit\u2019s the most progressive thing ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, the play-within-a-play ensues, encapsulating the show\u2019s story that Hardy calls \u201chilarious,\u201d \u201caggressive\u201d and \u201csubversive.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not trying to give you a warm, clear moral,\u201d Hardy says. \u201cInstead, it really undercuts every resolution \u2014 you think you\u2019re about to learn something, or have a cathartic moment, and then bam. The song flips and you\u2019re in a darker place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox has worked as an orchestrator, composer and musical producer for a number of shows and musicians; before \u201cSlam Frank,\u201d he most recently wrote the music for \u201cThe Last Magic Negro,\u201d a short satirical musical about the \u201cmagic Negro\u201d movie trope (a wise, perhaps mystical character whose only purpose is to help the white protagonist). He\u2019s also published a series of Stephen Sondheim songs adapted to various musical styles, and a viral cover of Vanessa Carlton\u2019s \u201cA Thousand Miles\u201d set to the chord progression of jazz standard \u201cGiant Steps.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“The Producers,” the 1967 film by Mel Brooks starring Zero Mostel, left, and Gene Wilder, shocked audiences by placing buffoonish Nazis at the center of a black comedy about show business. (Embassy Pictures)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Fox, who grew up Jewish in Los Angeles before moving to New York in 2005, calls himself a \u201cpretty secular\u201d Jew. His grandfather was the ritual director for a Conservative synagogue in L.A. for 60 years. Fox said he grew up going to synagogue for the High Holidays and had a bar mitzvah, but his relationship with Judaism has been \u201ccomplicated.\u201d (He also shared that he was kicked out of Hebrew school as a kid.) <\/p>\n

Sinensky is Jewish, as well \u2014 and in Fox\u2019s words, is \u201cthe most secular a Jew can get.\u201d<\/p>\n

Assuming it is real, \u201cSlam Frank\u201d is set to join a lineage of provocative Jewish-written comedies \u2014 headlined by Mel Brooks\u2019 \u201cThe Producers\u201d \u2014 that tested taboos around the Holocaust, including the 1993 British comedy \u201cGenghis Cohn\u201d and Taika Waititi\u2019s 2019 dramedy, \u201cJojo Rabbit.\u201d <\/p>\n

Avinoam Patt, who co-edited the book \u201cLaughter After: Humor and the Holocaust,\u201d said that \u201cSlam Frank,\u201d from the looks of it, differs from works like \u201cThe Producers\u201d: While Brooks set out to mock Hitler and his followers, Fox and Sinensky\u2019s play is \u201cusing the backdrop of the Holocaust to raise and amplify the satire that they\u2019re trying to make.\u201d <\/p>\n

With the backdrop of the Holocaust comes controversy, especially if \u201cthere\u2019s a feeling that it sort of trivializes the memory of the Holocaust,\u201d said Patt, who teaches a Jewish humor class at New York University. \u201cIf you situate a joke against the backdrop or the context of the Holocaust, it ups the ante. It raises the level of tension and the stakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

That the play comedically deals with the story of Anne Frank, in particular, raises the ante even more, said Patt. Comedic treatments of Anne Frank have been done before, he pointed out \u2014 \u201cFamily Guy\u201d has cutaway jokes about the young diarist and Jewish comedian Jeff Ross hosted a \u201croast\u201d of Anne Frank on Netflix, to name two examples. <\/p>\n

But at a time of rising antisemitism, and with accusations that Jews are \u201cweaponizing\u201d the Holocaust to defend Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza, are people losing their tolerance for Anne Frank humor? <\/p>\n

Fox said he\u2019s received death threats, as well as threats of people protesting at the show. But, he pointed out, \u201cThere has already been massive political and artistic, and discursive co-opting of Anne Frank, in every direction.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cSo if you\u2019re the type of person who will post a picture of Anne Frank for your own political cause \u2014 \u2018Anne Frank would be for the earned income tax credit,\u2019 or whatever \u2014 and I start playing with that, then you get bothered?\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s a you thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Performances of \u201cSlam Frank\u201d begin Sept. 17 at Asylum NYC (123 E 24th St.). The upcoming dates are part of a developmental run, meaning the script is still being tweaked for later performances.<\/p>\n

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