Telford, which is on the border of Montgomery and Bucks counties, is far from the most Jewish area of the Philadelphia region. Nevertheless, Telford’s DCP Theatre this month is presenting a production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” — something that the principals of both the play and the theater thought was important in the present moment.
This production, while based on the actual diary and the original 1955 play, is an adaptation of Wendy Kesselman’s 1997 version of the play, the one in which Natalie Portman and Linda Lavin starred in the original Broadway production. That version featured some revisions based on new scholarship about Frank that had emerged by that time.
The show’s director, Marianne Dell’Aquila, who has been with DCP since 2003, said that, despite not being Jewish, the Anne Frank story had “just pulled me to it at a young age.”
Joel Rosenwasser, the veteran area theater director who directed the last local production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” at the Players Club of Swarthmore in 2024, is serving as the dramaturg of the DCP Theatre production.
Dell’Aquila noted that, other than the Swarthmore production two years ago, she didn’t remember any local stage production of any version of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in at least a decade.
“I really started to think like, ‘I’m supposed to help tell this story,’” Dell’Aquila said. “I don’t have any kind of obvious connection. It’s just an emotional connection.”
As part of the theater’s process, she brought the idea to a play-reading session and continued to do so for a couple of years.
“Every year, there was a lot of concern about the timing,” Dell’Aquila said. “And [artistic director Jane Spigel] has always been very supportive of me because our stance was, if you have to ask that question, yes, it’s always the right time.”
Anytime the show is performed, Rosenwasser said, “People can relate to current events that remind them of Anne and the families. When I did the show in 1985, it was all about Ronald Reagan’s visit to Bitburg. In 2024, it was right after Oct. 7. And today is obvious as well.”
Rosenwasser described “The Diary of Anne Frank” as “the only show where if you don’t get a reaction, if you have silence at the end of the show, it shows more appreciation for what the performance has been than a big, rousing round of applause, which they eventually will get.”
What was different between the 1950s play and the version that debuted in 1997?
“[The original play was] 1955, only 10 years after the Holocaust, and they were still finding out material,” Rosenwasser said. “The ensuing years, from 1955 to 1997, when this one came out, there was more material uncovered, and people said, ‘Oh, they forgot about these things about Anne, and she was much more of a woman.’”
“They kept intact a lot of the original content from the original show, but they updated it with some more historical pieces,” Rosenwasser said. “So in this piece, they reference history. They have Hitler’s voice. They have Eisenhower’s voice. They’re talking about certain things more [specifically]. But at the same time, they were trying to keep some of the context of the old show, and they were trying to update some of the information about Anne.”
In the DCP production, 12-year-old Ella Pinkerton plays Anne, while Thomas Rush plays her father, Otto Frank.
Rush said that he had actually appeared in a production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” 20 years earlier, in which he played Peter Van Daan.
“To have lived 20 years now, going from 19 to where I am now, it’s such a different approach that I’ve taken to this piece,” Rush said. “I’ve been connected to this story for what seems like my whole life.” He noted that his grandmother, who passed away recently, had sat him down at age 9 to tell him the story of Anne Frank.
“I told Marianne [that] even if I’m … sweeping, I don’t care. I just want to be involved in helping to bring this story to the stage. I think one of the most important things that I’ve done this time is actually reading a lot of what Otto wrote. We’ve watched documentaries; we’ve met with people who have extended family members who were part of the Holocaust. I was able to go to the Anne Frank exhibit twice in New York.”
Rosenwasser said that, as a dramaturg, he wanted to make sure the show got the Jewish details right.
“I can tell you that everybody in the cast, everybody in the crew, has done their homework, and they’re doing the show from the heart, and it’s really wonderful to see.”
Dell’Aquila was impressed, she said, with the strong turnout for the show’s auditions. And she said that two actors in the show, Tiffany Peoples (Mrs. Frank) and Florence Wydra-Gat (Mrs. Van Daan), “have Jewish family members that were survivors and some that didn’t make it.”
“They researched these people,” she said of the actors.
Spigel added that the show will feature both bios of the main characters in the lobby and a “Helpers Wall,” listing people who have gone out of their way to be helpers, both in the Holocaust and in the decades since, on one side of the auditorium.
The production of The Diary of Anne Frank opened on Jan. 30 and will conclude with its second weekend, on Feb. 6 at 7:30 p.m., Feb. 7 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and Feb. 8 at 2 p.m. The Feb. 7 matinee performance will feature a talkback session with Bonnie Elkaim, the granddaughter of a German Holocaust survivor and an educator who worked on the recent Anne Frank exhibit in New York.
Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.