Family Affair

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK

by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett

Of the essential heroes and heroines of our age--in which nobility of behavior too often seems but the prelude to the corruption of celebrity--Anne Frank remains one of the most admirable, quietly exerting her claim on conscience and imagination. It is not just that she was martyred before her sweet, shrewd, unaffected voice could be deadened by self-consciousness and moral certitude. It is also that she had a true artistic gift: a good eye for the telling nuances of human behavior, an instinctively humane spirit, delightedly celebrating the persistence of the ordinary in the most extraordinary circumstances.

Because Anne Frank's story has permeated our historical consciousness, some of the emotional impact of the play, based on the diary Anne kept during the two years that she, her family and an assortment of acquaintances spent hiding from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic, has faded in the 23 years since it was first produced. We come to it already knowing what we feel about Anne and her situation. As a result interest tends to shift toward how an American acting family, Eli Wallach, his wife Anne Jackson and their daughters, Roberta and Katherine, fare as impersonators of the Franks.

The results are mixed, with the elder Wallachs emerging most successfully. There will doubtless be some who will now find the passivity of the survival tactic Anne Frank's father imposed on his family less than heroic, but as Mr. Frank, Eli Wallach communicates the virtue of kindly patience. He makes one feel that for a gently reared bourgeois family headed by such a man, his claustrophobic choice offered the best, most reasonable hope of enduring the Holocaust. Anne Jackson brings spirited understanding to the role of a woman caught in the primal conflict between mother and adolescent daughter under the most trying conditions. As Anne's mostly silent elder sister, Katherine Wallach quietly plays a self-effacing part, and the rest of the supporting cast are similarly competent. The problem is Roberta Wallach as Anne. She does well enough with the girl's mischievous and moony-romantic side, but she lacks both the physical and spiritual delicacy the role requires.

She cannot quite escape her galumphing post-adolescent self, though it must be added that the intimacy of a small off-Broadway house and an adaptation that stresses the familiar agonies of growing up at the expense of Anne Frank's singularity do not help her. Neither does Martin Fried's direction, which is more serviceable than subtle.

A couple of generations have come into being since this play was first seen in New York. Watching young girls in the audience held on the edge of their chairs by the power of the Anne Frank story makes this revival seem eminently worthwhile. It has, at least, a clarity that enables innocence to speak forcefully to innocence across the years and across vast differences of experience.

--Robert Schickel

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