From left: Anne (Olivia Bernábe), Peter (Alex Lewis), and Edith (Austen Horne) find something to revel about, even in an Amsterdam attic.
Anachronisms are a reliable source of fun and surprise in musicals, from the very casting and concept of Hamilton going back to “On any gent who wandered by, she’d pull the Theda Bara eye” (“Cleopatterer,” Leave It to Jane, 1917). But anachronisms have seldom had as strenuous a workout as the one they endure in Slam Frank, the musical at the Orpheum. The work of Joel Sinensky (book) and Andrew Fox (music and lyrics), it aims essentially to resurrect a mid-century classic, burden it with pop culture signposts from a variety of eras, reassess its relevance in these troubled times, and find it wanting. Which it does in an anything-for-a-laugh way, to the point where your sides may be sore from being poked in the ribs so relentlessly.
Peter dances up a storm, backed by Mrs. Van Daan (Jaz Zepatos), Otto (Rocky Paterra), and Anne.
That mid-20th-century classic is The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank’s teenage musings logged while hiding in an Amsterdam attic with her family, until the Nazis discovered them in 1944. It has been successfully adapted for stage and screen, not to mention a couple of less successful stage musical adaptations. But never anything like this. What if, Sinensky and Fox posit, Anne was not a Jew, but a LatinX named Maria, hiding out with her multicultural family? And what if her story were told hip-hop style, buttressed by fashions, technologies, and cultural markers from subsequent generations, up to and especially including the present?
Well, it would be chaotic. Anne (Olivia Bernábe) is still the earnest fulcrum around which the other characters revolve, but how those other characters have changed, each being laden with 21st-century identity crises. Edith (Austen Horne), Anne’s mother, is Black and feminist. Father Otto (Rocky Paterra) is secretly gay, and that’s such a tired, tired comic device; he also complains of having OCD, ADD, and whatever other initials spell diseases. His colleague Mr. Van Daan (John Anker Bow), also in hiding, is a misogynistic alpha male. Van Daan’s wife (Jaz Zepatos), resplendent in Jackie Kennedy pink, is a submissive wifey. Their son Peter (Alex Lewis), Anne’s puppy love interest in the original, is even gayer than Otto. And Anne’s sister Margot (Amelia Louise Barr, who also plays their grandmother) is so silent and passive that we just know she’s going to have a breakout number. Which turns out to be a jolly roundelay about how the Jews should take over Palestine—not funny, folks.
Anne is mostly a sober presence, but not when the music starts.
Each character, in fact, earns an I’m-not-going-to-put-up-with-this-crap moment, which the audience is hectored to applaud. Anne, for instance, trumpets her long-suppressed LatinX heritage in a production number featuring sombrero, maracas, ukulele, and pig; one hopes the offensiveness is intentional. What Sinensky and Fox seem to be implying is, in today’s world, every oppressed minority wants to have bragging rights as being the most victimized. A highly debatable notion, and what possible good can come from debating it?
The cast is gifted: strong-voiced, able to boogie to Esosa Oviasu’s shake-your-thing choreography, and even adept at displaying real emotion on the rare occasions that’s permitted. Bernábe wrests sympathy as well as humor out of this radically reconstituted Anne, and Lewis plays Peter with such yearning and naïveté, you actually care about him. Paterra excels at funny faces, and Bow makes a graceful transition from the reprehensible Mr. Van Daan to a last-minute special guest character; no spoilers, but he has a distinctive mustache.
Jew or LatinX? Anne ponders her identity, with Edith and her abuela (Amelia Louise Barr). Photographs by Shawn Salley.
Fox’s lyrics, when they’re audible, carry the occasional deft turn of phrase—“It’s a world war, Yanks are takin’ on Italy, but close quarters make quarrels, so we behaving brittle-ly”—and his music approaches a melody once or twice. Sinensky’s book generates genuine amusement at times, as when one character tells another, “Sometimes when you can’t easily explain your identity, it means it’s even better than all the others’!”
But that line’s emblematic of the constant emphasis on competitive victimization—not a comfy place to spend two hours. Sam Lafrage’s direction encourages outsize emotion at every turn and also necessitates much head-turning, with actors stationed on platforms throughout the Orpheum. Sometimes they’re videoed onstage, allowing for face-front; more often they’re not.
But any musical that opens with multiple projections of Patti LuPone for no apparent reason is out for easy laughs, and its program advisory, “Content Warning: Everything,” conveys what an exhausting experience this is. The audience, by the way, loved it, except for that old sourpuss in B6.
Slam Frank plays at the Orpheum Theatre (126 Second Ave.) through Nov. 30. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesdays through Mondays; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. For tickets, visit slamfrankmusical.com.
Music & Lyrics: Andrew Fox
Book: Joel Sinensky
Direction: Sam Lafrage
Choreography: Esosa Oviasu
Set Design: Adam Koch
Costume Design: Sarah Lockwood
Lighting Design: Jamie Roderick
Sound Design: Gage Baker
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