By: Darryl Reilly
“So, because she didn’t write it in Auschwitz no one cares?” says Otto Frank to an editor in playwright Claude Solnik’s absorbing fantasia The Diary. It dramatizes the angst over and the travails of publishing Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.
“I kept hoping you would all come back” says Miep Gies, a Dutch woman who helped hide the Frank family and four other Jews from the Nazis for over two years in the “Secret Annex” of an Amsterdam office building. Only Otto Frank survived The Holocaust. Gies presented him in July 1945 with his teenaged daughter Anne’s diary which Gies had taken possession of after their capture. “This is not the girl I knew!” cries Frank upon reading it. Anne recorded her honest adolescent thoughts on becoming a woman, her crush on a boy, and her strained relationship with her mother. What should be done with the diary?
Mr. Solnik’s well-researched factual scenario is embellished with smart theatricality, The Diary is a poignant memory play. The present perpetually collides with the past. Vignettes from the years in hiding are depicted while Otto Frank lovingly interacts with the departed and angrily with the zealous Nazi police officer who arrested them. We eventually learn that the edited diary was published in Holland in 1947 and in the United States in 1952 where the original German pronunciation of Anne as Anna was Americanized to Anne.
Solnik confidentially renders these incidents through suspense, momentum, and emotionalism. His pleasing dialogue smoothly imparts exposition and history. The Diary fascinates and informs. It also tackles enduring Holocaust denialism, some espoused at the time and now that the diary was fake and that Anne Frank never existed.
With his bald head, striking facial features, and haunted mien, Charles E. Gerber resembles Otto Frank. Mr. Gerber’s resonant voice and innate stage presence further enhance his majestic portrayal of the play’s central sorrowful figure. Gerber veers from melancholy to feisty with ease. A program note informs the audience that he took over the role midway through rehearsals. This necessitates him subtly relying on the script in view for the latter portions of the presentation. That does not distract from his towering performance.
The captivating Eva Gozé beamingly gives us the Anne Frank in all her spritely glory and wonderment that we have come to expect. Employing dry comic timing and conveying tenderness, Patricia Magno is enchanting as the heroic Miep. Youthful Cameron Reilly-Steele is unrelentingly chilling as the fierce Nazi police officer. Bespectacled Gabi Schwartz is simultaneously girlish and stalwart as Anne’s older sister Margot. Deborah Rupy offers a sweet yet formidable turn as their mother Edith.
As cagey Knopf agent Judith Jones, the magnetic Karen Freer is marvelously wily though sympathetic. Animated Laura Jones is equally as slyly pragmatic as the Dutch counterpart. Lean and personable Hugo Persson is charming as the boyishly swaggering object of Anne’s affection. Soulful and intense Rene Sambrailo makes a stirring impression as a passionate Otto Frank confidant who supports publishing the diary.
Ms. Rupy’s proficient direction of this world premiere production has the large cast in motion on the contained playing area with precision combined with presentational flourishes. The stage is strategically set with basic furnishings and shelves which cleverly suggest late 1940’s locales as well as the Franks’ hiding place. Marsh Shugart’s atmospheric lighting design evokes the past and contains somber blackouts for scene transitions.
The Jewish Frank family left their native Germany for the Netherlands in late 1933. They endured the German occupation which began in 1940. By the summer of 1942 they along with four other Jews went into hiding to avoid deportation to concentration camps. Two years later, Nazi forces stormed the building they were concealed in, arrested them, and later shipped them off in cattlecars for extermination. Anne died at the age of 15 at Bergen-Belsen in early 1945, Margot died soon after. Their mother and their compatriots all perished. Otto Frank survived Auschwitz and died in 1980 at the age of 91.
The Diary (through January 25, 2026)
Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, in Manhattan
For tickets, visit www.theaterforthenewcity.net
Running time: two hours including one intermission