By: Darryl Reilly
“We are both having very tough times, I would like to think of you as a sister” says an undocumented Guatemalan girl living in Queens to her vision of Anne Frank in playwright Joseph P. Krawczyk’s topical and stirring drama The Diary of Ana Fernandez.
In 2025 14-year-old Ana Fernandez lives with her day laborer father Rodrigo; her mother died in their native country. When he doesn’t pick her from high school as usual there is fear that he has been detained by marauding ICE agents. Ana’s teacher Dolores takes her to her apartment for refuge. Delores’ husband Juan owns an auto body shop and is initially wary of harboring Ana.
Allusions to Anne Frank abound as her image periodically is projected above the stage while Ana writes in her own pivotal diary while addressing Frank through recorded voiceovers. Rodrigo shows up and goes into hiding with his daughter in the teacher’s apartment. Then there is the debatable comparison of the Nazis to the present-day United States.
Mr. Krawczyk’s resonant scenario is enforced by his often-lyrical dialogue with its flashes of humor delivered by his well-delineated characters. This world premiere production of The Diary of Ana Fernandez has a running time of over two hours including an intermission. Arguably, future incarnations of it would benefit from a tauter construction to achieve further momentum and more intense pacing.
Sprightly Marjorie Cabrera as Ana delivers a tender and passionate performance evoking adolescent angst. The luminous Jessica Panora is august as the articulate and noble Dolores. Nathan J. Cusson’s charismatic stage presence endows his forceful characterization of Juan with pragmatism and compassion. Magnetic Alan Cordoba-Diaz is fiery and humane as Rodrigo.
Director Eddie Lew brisk physical staging on the finely detailed apartment set contains visually inspired flourishes such as entrances and exits throughout the auditorium. Gus Ferrari’s lighting design is suitably moody and atmospheric. Projection designer Jake Minter renders the vintage imagery of Anne Frank with striking effect. The performance under review was efficiently overseen by stage manager Mikaela Blanchard.
The Jewish Frank family left their native Germany for the Netherlands in late 1933. They endured the German occupation which began in 1940. Anne kept a diary of her experiences and thoughts. 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 cattle cars for extermination. Anne died at the age of 15 at Bergen-Belsen in early 1945, her sister Margot died soon after. Their mother and their compatriots all perished. Father Otto Frank survived Auschwitz and died in 1980 at the age of 91. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl was published in Holland in 1947 and in the United States in 1952.
The Diary of Ana Fernandez is a moving theatrical experience which painfully dramatizes that the past is the present.
The Diary of Ana Fernandez (through September 20, 2026)
American Theatre of Actors, 314 West 54th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, visit www.americantheatreofactors.org
Running time: two hours and 15 minutes including one intermission