On The Tube

Local Production

Lukas

F OSS

Jo; Nakamatsu • Yektne Kasretad

*r.424,1

A

nne Frank's life has been a
rich font of inspiration to
playwrights, filmmakers and biog-
raphers. What isn't so well known
is that composers also have been
galvanized by the teenager's legacy.
In 1985, Michael Cohen wrote
the music-theater piece called Yours,
Anne, which engendered two more
Cohen works: a song cycle titled I
Am Anne Frank and the wistful
chamber piece, I Remember. The
latter work was splendidly recorded
last year on the Newport label.
Now comes Lukas Foss' Elegy
for Anne Frank, on a new
Harrnonia Mundi CD. The Elegy
was composed in the late 1980s,
but has just now been recorded.
Foss' work isn't as expertly written
or as expansive as I Remember, but
it certainly has its merits.
The disc includes nvo versions of
the work, one with narration (with
diary excerpts read by the compos-
er's limpid-voiced daughter, Eliza
Foss) and the other strictly instru-
mental. The narrated selection is
preferable because it gives the music
context and added poignancy.
Under the direction of Cm-1St.
Clair, the Elegy is touching without
being saccharine, with hushed strings
and the composer playing the piano
with delicacy. The Pacific Symphony
Orchestra performs with sensitivity.
However, in a sudden change of
gears, the mood turns stormy, with
a mounting crescendo punctuated
by brass and percussion. According
to the liner notes, this outburst is
intended to refer to the horrors of
the Holocaust. It's too pat; Foss is
trying to cram too much drama
into a relatively brief piece.
The poignancy of the beginning
music returns, however, with an
appropriately questioning, unre-
solved ending.

— Reviewed by George Bulanda

‘,4

2001

78

The youth production, under the direction of Loretta Grimes, will feature
13 area young actors from several middle and high schools. Tickets are $10
adults/$7 youth and seniors, and may be purchased at the door.
For more information or reservations, call (734) 663-7167.

PACIFIC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA • CARL ST.CLAIR

MeV For Anne

5/18

edbud Productions will present Wendy Kesselman's 1997 updated
411, adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1955 play The Diary of Anne
Frank by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday
and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Nlay 31-June 3, at Riverside Arts Center,
located at 76 North Huron St. in Ypsilanti.

BEYOND THE ATTIC from page

77

cut off— something the producers insist-
ed on from the start
did not faze her.
"I'm quite excited about it, but also
nervous," Gordon admitted moments
before the scene was shot.

Filming Challenges

polarized about Anne," Kappes says.
But he is quick to defend the film-
ing of yet another adaptation of
Anne's story.
"Many people say that Anne Frank
has been done nine times, so why do
it again? But this production tells the
parts we don't know — Anne's child-
hood and the horror of being sent to
the camps," he says.
"It is a story that has to be told con-

Producers Kappes and Proppe consid-
ered filming in Amsterdam
but opted for Prague, largely
because of cost.
"There was rarely an origi-
nal, intact block in
Amsterdam that still looked
the way it did in 1944, with-
out a modern addition,"
Kappes says.
Instead, an Amsterdam
facade was built along Prague's
Vltava River, and other parts
of Prague were used as well.
Another strike against an
Amsterdam location was the
passion the topic arouses there.
The miniseries doesn't come
without its own costs of con-
troversy. There has been an
ongoing war of words waged
by the Anne Frank House in
Even the prospect of having her hair
Amsterdam and the Anne
cut off— something the producer's
Frank Foundation in
Switzerland, who have split
insisted on from the start — did not
over support of the film.
faze Taylor Gordon.
The Anne Frank House has
backed this biography; the
tinuously," he says. "In the U.S., chil-
Swiss foundation has backed off,
dren are not aware of the horror and
berating the book's and film's inclusion
inhumanity, and they have to be so
of five pages from the diary originally
that this does not happen again." ❑
torn out by Anne's father, Otto, who
thought the language too hurtful to
— Michael Elkin of the Jewish
his wife's/Anne's mother's image.
Exponent contributed to this article.
In deference to the foundation and not
wanting to get caught in the crosshairs of
a Holocaust contretemps, Steven
Spielberg, who had signed on as the
film's executive director, dropped out.
The Swiss miss out on this production,
Anne Frank airs 9-11 p.m.
but are behind a feature movie about
Sunday and Monday, May 20-
Anne Frank due out next year.
21, on ABC.
"Amsterdam's residents are very

Novel Approach

A

dapted from her stage play of
the same name, Cherie
Bennett's young adult novel Anne
Frank and /Vie (G.P. Putnam's Sons;
$18.99), written in collaboration
with her husband, Jeff Gottesfeld,
examines the Holocaust through
the eyes of a teenager, demonstrat-
ing the similarities between teens
across cultures and time.
Nicole Burns, a non-Jewish
American 10th-grader, becomes
Nicole Bernhardt as she is trans-
ported back to Nazi-occupied Paris
in 1942. An average self-involved
suburban teen with the normal
teenage dreams and insecurities,
Nicole is now a Jewish girl, a mem-
ber of a prominent Jewish family.
She exchanges hip-hop for swing,
English for French, and her own
personal Web site for the indigni-
ties, humiliations and fears of life as
a Jew in wartime France.
After living in hiding, Nicole is
deported by the Nazis. She meets
Anne Frank in a train car headed to
a concentration camp, their des-
tinies unknown.
In the novel, young readers con-
front apathy, collaboration and
moral choice. Would today's teens
be strong enough to follow their
convictions, fighting for truth and
against injustice? The authors
remind us, "Being a witness is not
enough, one must take action."
A native Detroiter who went to
Bagley Elementary School in Detroit,
Bennett graduated from Andover
High School in Bloomfield Hills. She
received her religious education from
Temple Beth El, where she was con-
firmed. Her best memories include
many hours of after-school activities
spent at the Jewish Community
Center in West Bloomfield.
Bennett and Gottesfeld travel
around the country speaking to teens
about the Holocaust and the mes-
sages found in their novel. "Writing
for, and about, teens is what I do
best," says Bennett, whose play has
been performed for young audiences
by Jewish Ensemble Theatre.
She will return to one of her
favorite metro Detroit haunts this
fall, when she and Gottesfeld
appear at the Jewish Community
Center of Metropolitan Detroit's
annual Jewish Book Fair.

Bobbi Charnas, Editorial Assistant