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L E I S U R E & T R AV E L
Experience a classic Maine fishing village; plus, exotic Sumatra’s elephants and rhinos, and how to avoid the most dangerous places page 22
ARTS & STYLE
Various versions The first English translation of Anne’s diary was published in 1952. The original stage adaptation, written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, premiered in 1955 and was a commercial and critical success at the time, winning a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. However, through the years, that version of the play has been criticized as too sentimental, glossing over the characters’ Jewish identity and giving audiences a misleading message of hope with the famous penultimate line, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” The 1997 adaptation written by American playwright Wendy Kesselman, which the CSC will present, puts more emphasis on the characters’ Judaism and includes scenes in which they pray and celebrate Chanukah. Kesselman’s version also includes a passage in which Anne talks about her sexual
MAY 2019
More than 125,000 readers throughout Greater Baltimore
Revisiting Anne Frank’s life By Carol Sorgen Born in Germany in 1929, Anne Frank would have celebrated her 90th birthday this June. Instead, she will forever remain 15 years old for those who have read her posthumously published diary, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, seen its various stage and film adaptations, or visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Anne died in 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. Though born in Germany, she lived most of her life in Amsterdam, and when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands, she and her family went into hiding there. They were among eight people confined to a secret annex at her father’s business between 1942 and 1944, when they were all arrested and deported to various Nazi concentration camps. Of the group in hiding, only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survived the Holocaust. It was Otto who arranged the publication of his daughter’s diary following the war. He died in 1980 at the age of 90. For the next several months, the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (CSC) and Baltimore’s arts community will remember Anne Frank and the universal lessons of the Holocaust through a revised staging of The Diary of Anne Frank as well as a series of major exhibitions, performances and public conversations.
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Hannah Kelly and Stephen Patrick Martin bring Anne Frank and her father, Otto, to life in a new adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Theater that runs through May 26. Throughout Baltimore, other events will mark the would-be 90th birthday of Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when she was 15 years old.
feelings towards another girl, something that Otto insisted be redacted from the original publication of her diary. (Subsequent editions of the diary published after his death included those entries.) The CSC production also includes a new ending in which Otto tells the audience what happened to the rest of the hidden group after their arrest and internment in the camps. And instead of Anne’s hopeful final message about the decency of people, she is shown as she was last seen by a friend at Bergen-Belsen: “through the barbed wire, naked, her head shaved, covered with lice. ‘I don’t have anyone anymore,’ she weeps.”
While the original version of the play is still available for staging, CSC didn’t hesitate to choose the more recent adaptation. “This new version is more honest and more direct with the audience,” said Jean Thompson, the company’s director of communications. She added that CSC’s Founder and Artistic Director Ian Gallanar chose the play for several reasons, among them being the theater’s mission to stage at least one classic work each season that is not just for adults. “A vital role of theater is to tell the stories that make a difference,” Thompson said. The play is “a modern classic,” according See ANNE FRANK, page 27
A Baltimore folk dance group is still in full swing after four decades; plus, singer Tori Amos returns to the Peabody Conservatory page 26
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