London Community Players
Palace Theatre
710 Dundas St.
London, On
519-432-1029
OUR REVIEWS
Anne Frank was the first major voice in Western culture who articulated the tragedy of the Holocaust on a personal level with a voice given life in the arts with powerful clarity. This play is a powerful reenactment of her final years in hiding, as told through her now-unsanitized writings that tell about her family’s attempt to survive with their spirits intact.
In 1943 Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, the Frank and the Van Daan families were forced to hide in the attic of Otto Frank’s old business as Germany persecution of Jews and other “undesirables” became too much to bear. Over the next year and a half, the fugitives desperately attempted to survive in hiding while Anne Frank, a precocious teenage girl, recorded her thoughts in her diary, where she articulated her fears and hopes with an eloquence beyond her years.
For years, Anne Frank has had an image of a real life Pollyanna even as she became the poster child of the Holocaust thanks to her father, Otto, censoring her diary. However much that could be justified for the mores of its time, it still distorts the real story of her life. This play is a refreshing break from that simplistic image, using Anne’s unexpurgated writings to tell more of the real story. What we get with that new-found knowledge is the story of a girl struggling to survive growing up in such terrible confinement as she comes to grips with her sexuality and faint hopes.
In telling the tale, the tone is surprisingly balanced. We see the fugitives making the best of things with surprisingly strong spirits, only to have their situation’s grinding realities and fears drive them ever lower. Meanwhile, Anne’s writing becomes ever more entrancing for all the hardship until it takes on a kind of defiant prose poetry at the end. Her famous quote, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart,” is revealed at the end to be just part of a powerful manifesto of the human spirit, showing that she had a wisdom that the world so needs.
All the while, there is an overhanging foreboding to the whole story when you know that almost none of the fugitives will ultimately survive. The entire story is colored with that knowledge with every accident, loud voice or overheard insinuation threatening to be their doom. However, when the hammer finally falls, it comes as you least expect it and it creates an ending as harrowing and heartbreaking as Anne’s fate truly was. That leads to a denouement that is powerful in its simplicity, as Anne’s one legacy is found for the world to know.
For this hard-edged story, the players are equal to the task. Katy Clark is ideal as Anne, a teenage girl as impetuous as she is talented as a writer, with internal passions she struggles to understand. This especially goes for her readings of her character’s diary, giving the right degree of passion and teenage angst to the writing in a way that will first amuse and then sear into your imagination. The other real standouts are David Bogaert and Bronwyn Powell as Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan respectively, a respectable Jewish couple who have high social pretensions, only to have them slowly decay as their situation becomes more desperate with terrible choices and sacrifices that scar them long before the Nazis will. While Evan Wasse is disappointingly wooden as Peter Van Daan, Barry Tepperman and Maria Piccoli Zimmerman are ideal as Otto and Edith Frank, Anne’s well-meaning parents trying desperately to keep this horrible situation from drowning them all.
The stage is remarkable for its elaborateness. It is a multi-leveled and -roomed space that feels positively spacious compared to what you would think an attic would be like. In short, it seems convincing as the perfect place to hide from a vile presence, hellbent on seeing you dead, where you can still keep your sanity. The use of sound is equally creative in a story where any idle sound could spell the characters’ doom, and when that happens, the sounds are a testament of their fate with anguished sophistication. Even when it’s just a single spotlight, there is a feeling of a whole world as Anne or her father tell their tales of a struggle that is in one attic, but reflects a greater tragedy outside that would redefine the whole world’s values.
Anne Frank gave the victims of the Holocaust their first human representative. This play honours her sacrifice with a more honest telling of her story and an unshackled voice everyone needs to hear
| The Diary of Anne Frank: Funny, endearing and incredibly human |
| Written by Sara Piszel |
| The Diary of Anne Frank The Palace Theater Very appropriately, The Diary of Anne Frank opened at the Palace Theater on November 11. This is the day that we stop and remember the soldiers that fought for our freedoms and rights. It is also a time to think of those whose lives were ripped away from this world: Anne Frank and her family, the Van Daans and Mr. Dussel. The Diary of Anne Frank is a stage adaptation of the book The Diary of a Young Girl, a book of the writings from the Dutch language diary kept by Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with her family and others during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The play, first performed on Broadway in 1955, was revived in 1997. This new adaptation by Wendy Kesselman is performed on The Palace Theatre stage by The London Community Players. Anne Frank began to keep a diary on her thirteenth birthday, June 12, 1942, while in hiding in the sealed-off upper rooms of the annex of her father's office building in Amsterdam. As every day passes in the annex, the possibility of their demise increases. And yet, despite this enormous stress placed on the families, they all manage to continue functioning and even loving each other. As played by Katy Clark, Anne’s ‘force of nature’ personality is the light when there is nothing but blackness. When they celebrate Hanukkah, Anne manages to give everyone a thoughtful gift even though they are running out of necessities and food. They make it through for so long, and Anne even finds romance and laughter in the annex. All of the actors were able to embody the spirits of the people that Anne’s diary describes. The actors had a heavy weight placed on them with this play to be sure. They are all very talented because they could be funny, endearing, frustrating, and incredibly human. After all, the very power that genocide depends on is the ability to dehumanize people, and this play takes that power away. The set design was intricate; the pictures on the walls, the architecture of the rooms, the lighting, and other props were thoughtful and realistic. The sharp edges of the walls and slanted ceilings portrayed the confinement that the two families were forced into. One of the beds is covered by a ceiling that looks like a prison; this was a visceral way to reveal both the physical and emotional tension in the annex. The costume design was accurate to the time frame of the Second World War. The high-waist skirts, hats, furs, and suspenders transported me to the 1940s. The excerpt of Hitler’s voice during a speech he made regarding the cleansing process was haunting. The sirens and disturbing noises of war were gut-wrenching. The sound effects combined with the lighting worked well together to create panic and anxiety about the ever-present threat of Nazi invasion inside the annex. This very worthwhile production was not easy to watch, but it did manage to take the attention away from the evil and place it upon a very strong, out-spoken girl named Anne Frank. |
Over the River and Through the Woods
Reviewed by Kenneth Chisholm, September 23, 2011
Warning: This review may contain spoilers.
By Joe DiPietro
Directed by Ed Williams
Performed by Elizabeth Williams, Fern Tepperman, Gord Hardcastle, Dave Perkins, Steven Gauthier and Dominique Kamras
A London Community Players Production
The Palace Theatre
September 23–October 1, 2011
The clash of different generations’ priorities has been the stuff of drama for millennia, but is especially true today in modern Western society with its value of individuality and personal freedom over traditional family. This play is an entertaining take on the theme as four Italian American seniors struggle to accept that their remaining grandson has his own dreams that apparently don’t include them.
Nicky (Steven Gauthier), a up and coming Italian-American marketing executive in Hoboken, New Jersey, comes to announce to his grandparents that he is taking a promotion and relocating to Seattle, Washington. The seniors, who deeply value family ties, cannot bear to have the last of the younger generation leave and try to manipulate him into staying. When Nicky realizes what they are doing and angrily confronts them, he suffers a panic attack that finds him convalescing in his grandparents’ house. There, he gains a new understanding of his seemingly overbearing and boorish elders’ values and insecurities even as they come to accept his need to live his own life.
The plot of modern kids having to deal with their pushy traditionalist parents about their own lives is a well worn plot of classic films like Crossing Delancy, but this play is special for the humanity that transcends the stereotypes. Granted, the old stereotypes like the doting grandmother and their collectively stubborn cultural obtuseness are in full force, but they are countered with a real emotional intelligence and self-respect. For instance, as funny as the transparent matchmaking scheme is, Nicky does not hesitate to stand up to his own relatives about this interference with a refreshing ferocity.
That said, those elders get their own chance to explain their feelings even as they struggle to accept that their children simply don’t share their value in familial togetherness. Dave Perkins particularly stands out when he, as Frank, tells the story how of his impoverished father sent him to America not out of rejection, but as the only chance for a better life, to explain why he desperately does not want to do the same to his last grandchild now. That kind of perspective allows for a certain emotional understanding that enables a satisfactory conclusion that allows for an honourable compromise with everyone’s love intact.
To make this family comedy with such emotional equilibrium work, the players are up to the task. For instance, Steven Gauthier is an appealing lead with just the right tone of consideration and snarkiness that can naturally develop when you are surrounded by such grandrelatives whom you love even as they drive you up the wall. Fern Tepperman and Elizabeth Williams as Aida and Emma manage to inject some endearing love into their stereotypical roles as the blindly pushy grandmothers who cannot understand at first why their efforts to keep their last grandchild around is backfiring so disastrously.
Meanwhile, Gord Hardcastle has the most gratifyingly nuanced role as Nunzio, who carries a heartbreaking prognosis from his doctor but is wise enough to allow it to help him understand his grandson’s need for his own life, even as his own is ending. Finally, Dominique Kamras stands out as Caitlin, a seemingly lovely woman who is a willing conspirator who has her own difficulty understanding Nicky’s family relations until she finally finds a maturity she never expected.
As for the stagecraft, the stage is set beautifully as the kind of hand-built home, lovingly promised from a builder husband to his loving wife, that would be hard to leave for any reason. At the same time, the players are still able to make it almost a prison for Nicky as the conflict between his ambitions and his familial ties reaches a boiling point. In contrast, the simple scenes in the left-hand corner just outside the front door make for some of the most memorable acting of the play with no distractions to dilute the palpable emotion of the performance.
Family comedic ethnic dramas like this can descend into tired cliches and stereotypes. Thankfully, this play proves it is much more than that with intelligent writing and thoughtful acting that understands the real worth of family and the need to let go.
Written by Sarah Needles
Over the River and Through the Woods
By Joe DiPietro
Directed by Ed Williams
Palace Theatre
Sept 23 – Oct. 1, 2011
The London Community Players opened their 2011-2012 season this week with Over the River and Through the Woods, a hilarious yet sensitive portrayal of the clashes between generations in a large Italian-American family. When twenty-nine-year old Nick Cristano receives a job offer that will take him far away from his home in Hoboken, New Jersey, his four grandparents will try anything to convince him to stay. A comedy centred on family, food and faith, this is a charming play for the Thanksgiving season.
First produced in New York in 1997, Over the River and Through the Woods explores how the meaning of family has changed in recent decades. While Nick is prepared to continue his career far from home, and put off marriage until a later date, his grandparents immigrated to America to build a better life for their children – one focused on family, marriage and loyalty. The play hinges on this philosophical tug-of-war, interjected with witty one-liners and moving monologues.
The play boasts a very strong cast of six. Steven Gauthier, appearing for the first time with London Community players, was genuine as Nick Cristano, bringing impatience and humour to the role of an exasperated grandson. Fern Tepperman and Dave Perkins, as grandparents Aida and Frank, were very believable, blending the right amount of earnestness and love to achieve great comedic timing. Gord Handcastle and Elizabeth Williams as Nunzio and Emma were gregarious and certainly loud on entrance, yet brought a quiet tenderness to the more sobering aspects of their characters. Handcastle, in his final scene with Gauthier, was especially touching. Dominique Camras, as the charming Caitlin, was an excellent balance to Gauthier’s intensity, bringing sympathy and wit to the stage.
With many returning jokes, memorable one-liners and plenty of physical comedy, the script is bursting with energy, helped along by a generous helping of chemistry among the actors. From the endless sandwiches to never-functioning electronic devices to a hysterically funny game of Trivial Pursuit, the play is full of plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, making the sobering ending all the more poignant and meaningful.
The set, designed by Tim Dowdy, was meticulous and beautifully done. An open living-dining room with sienna and beige walls transported the audience immediately into the comforts of a family home, while details such as icons of the Virgin Maria, glass cabinets and a full dining set finished the design. Deciding on a fixed set that allowed for detailed set-dressing was a trade-off, however, as some set pieces were buried far upstage away from the audience. Unfortunately, a dining table placed far upstage centre took the actors away from the audience, losing some intensity in the process.
The costumes, designed by Marge Bildy, were simple and timeless. From Nick’s tailored suits to Emma’s eye-catching jacket, the costumes suited each character well and did not date the play in any way. Having Nick appear in his grandfather’s striped flannel pyjamas was an adorable touch.
The lighting, designed by Rob Coles, was generally well-balanced and bright enough for the entire stage. While the lights dimmed briefly to spotlight on a single character during a monologue, the transition was not distinct enough as to be effective, leaving the audience wondering whether the transition was deliberate or not. The lighting downstage right, outside the front door, however, was beautifully done, providing a distinct contrast to the “indoor” parts of the stage.
The addition of live music brought a spark of zest to the production, with accordion player Jim Cocchetto serenading the audience before and after the play and during intermission. The music added Italian flair and flavouring to the show, and Cocchetto is a true professional in his trade.
Over the River and Through the Woods is a hilarious comedy, sure to strike a chord with anyone who has ever struggled to understand their family and especially their grandparents, and with grandparents who are baffled by their grandchildren. A perfect play for the Thanksgiving season, this show brings the funniest and most tragic aspects of family life to the stage.
[Photos by Ross Davidson]
LONDON COMMUNITY PLAYERS
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