WINNER 8 2007 TONY AWARDS INCLUDING
Anne Anew from page 49
which were restored in an edition
published well after his 1980 death.
Unexpectedly, though, the relation-
ship between Anne and the slightly
older but shy Peter van Daan is
portrayed nearly as chastely as in
previous dramatizations. Without
knowing which (if any) scenes were
trimmed from the BBC adaptation
for American audiences, one won-
ders if the version shown in Britain
included a sequence involving Anne
and Peter's teenage hormones.
Ellie Kendrick's (An Education)
forthright but shaded performance as
Anne Frank drives the production all
the way to its heart-rending conclu-
sion. At the same time, we get a strong
sense of the myriad interpersonal
tensions in the group, attributable to
a collision of sensibilities as well as
prolonged close quarters. What doesn't
come through as strongly is the sense
that two full years are passing.
Anne was 13 when she entered the
annex and 15 when she was captured
and shipped to her death (with her
mother and sister) at Bergen-Belsen.
Always the apple of her father's eye,
Anne's attention progresses over the
years in hiding from Daddy to Peter
(in the program's second hour) to a
near-obsessive focus on her diary.
Rejuvenated by upbeat radio news-
casts of the Allies seizing the upper
hand from the Nazis, the annex's
inhabitants — the intellectual and
refined Otto, Edith, Margot and Anne
Frank; the crude, bickering Herman
and Petronella van Daan and the
reticent Peter; and the stuffy dentist,
Albert Dussel, who shares a room with
Anne — allow themselves to revel in
dreams of life after the war.
Anne, however, is inspired by an
announcement that firsthand accounts
of the Occupation will be especially
prized. Enamored with the project of
polishing her diary, and enthralled at
discovering her calling as a writer, she
immerses herself into her work.
The great and grievous irony, of
course, is that she didn't live to see
herself recognized —immortalized,
really — as a writer.
Ultimately, Anne Frank's life
and diary testify to the triumph of
humanity over ideology. For a teen-
ager, even one as uncommonly ambi-
tious as she was, that's a remarkable
accomplishment.
❑
MATURESUBJECTMATTER
Fisher Theatre • April 20—May 9 _ . Tickets at Fisher Theatre box office
Ticketmaster cam 800-982-2787 & all ticketrnaster outlets
Groups of 124- 313-871-1132 or email GroupSales;Es'NederlanderDetroit corn
Info 313-872-1000 & — BROADWAY \ DETROIT corn • Broadway in Detroit
sponsored by your Southeastern Michigan Lincoln Mercury dealers • DriveLM com
Detroit Public Television airs a
new adaptation of The Diary of
Anne Frank 9-11 p.m. Sunday,
April 11. For a limited time begin-
ning April 12th, the production
will be available to view online
at pbs.org/masterpiece.
.
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Holocaust Heroine from page 49
out of college. You might think she'd be
frustrated that it took all these years,
but Grossman says it was necessary for
her to realize that it was a story of two
women, not one.
"I'm so thrilled that [the film.] didn't
happen until this point in my life
because what happened in the interim
was I became a mother;' Grossman
explains.
She identified for the first time with
Catherine's memoir, which details the
mother and daughter's incarceration and
reflects on Hannah's life and character.
"Hopefully it takes it beyond just a story
of heroism, beyond a Jewish story, to
a universal story of a love between a
mother and a daughter," Grossman says.
As the first feature-length documen-
tary about Senesh, Blessed Is the Match
will make a powerful imprint on cur-
rent and future generations of young
Jews — especially girls. It begs the
question if we would have had a differ-
ent experience of being Jewish had we
heard Senesh's story as children.
"I think maybe we would have been
A Family Diner
less sad:' Grossman says. "I grew up
reading Anne Frank and every other
piece of Holocaust literature that I
could get my hands on, and I think ifs
left an indelible mark on my spirit in
not necessarily the most positive way.
"That's one of the reasons I wanted
to make the movie Grossman says,
not because I want young girls to
parachute behind enemy lines, but
she's a model of standing up for what
you believe is right, and for believing
that moral choices are important and
do make a difference. One of my goals,
in a grandiose sort of fantasy, was to
make Hannah Senesh as well known
outside of Israel as Anne Frank. Not
to denigrate Anne Frank, whom I love,
but I think there's a lot of room for
other models and other stories:' ❑
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April 8 • 2010
51