The Diary of Anne Frank

Toads Theatre Company, Torquay

FOUR STARS

THERE is temptation generally to venerate Anne Frank simply because she was a victim of atrocity.

We want her to be all the more saintly in an attempt to sharpen the contrast in the good-versus-evil axis.

And there are many discourses which take this route.

It somehow soothes our collective brow.

But this dramatisation of the diary by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett does not do that.

There is a recognition here that to be human is saintly enough.

That there is no attempt to sanitise this bright mischievous young woman is its strength.

Here is a precocious, bolshy teenager.

She is thrilled by her first kiss and cruel to her mother in playing out her sometimes confusing and painful teenage relationships.

There are many who have attempted to get under this girl's skin. But it is Frank's own insights that are the most poignant here.

In less capable hands, this tale could so easily have slipped into sentimentality.

But director Sarah O'Connor knows better than this.

Though the world is perpetually crying out for explanation to what happened more than 60 years ago, Ms O'Connor knows that this is not the place to attempt to offer one here.

Instead, there is deft stage handling and use of lighting, sound and projections to show rather than tell.

Particularly harrowing scenes come when the lights are bravely turned out on the stage.

The audience is left scrabbling for clues, like our protagonists, as to whether their hiding place has been discovered.

And even when we are privy to private dialogue, other characters are always on stage leaving the audience in no doubt of the cramped and claustrophobic conditions.

Actress Hannah Samuel is a sparky Anne, using all her energy and charm to breathe life into a character that so often feels two-dimensional in long-ago sepia.

Neil Oxley as Peter Van Daan (Anne's beau) does well in his acting debut for the company.

All the cast are clearly giving everything to their roles and convey a very real sense of revulsion and terror.

But it is not all about the big emotions.

Conveying the frustration of close quarter living is just as valid as we follow them in their fight for survival.

The lights fade on the action as the hiding place is finally discovered.

As the curtain comes down, the actors refrain from taking a final bow. They know, like the audience, that this is no time for cheering.

The production runs until Saturday.

Hannah Taylor