Legacy The Diary of Anne Frank BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	The Diary of Anne Frank By Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett. Adapted by Wendy Kesselman. Directed by Bryna Wortman. With Jillian Blevins, Shelly Cohen, Donald J. Dallaire, Nicholas J. Foehr, William Hancock-Brainerd, Alison Kantrowich, Kyle A. Maddock, Jaclyn G. Marfuggi, Erin M. Olson, and Ian Richardson. At URI Theatre through May 7.

The horrific details of the Holocaust were known during World War II and its dimensions soon after. But it took the publication of The Diary of Anne Frank in 1947 and the Broadway play eight years later to widely humanize the chapter in America’s consciousness and conscience by individualizing it.

In 1997, some chapters of the original book that had been expurgated by Anne’s father were restored in a new version of the play. The deletions were mostly harsh adolescent assessments of her mother, jottings on sexual awakening, and angry remarks that showed Anne to be a hot-headed adolescent first and a saint-in-waiting second. URI Theatre is staging this filled-out version, and while the play remains a melodrama, the ensemble performs it well.

After all, what could be more melodramatic than the sequence of actual events depicted: Two families of Jews hidden on the upper floor of an Amsterdam office building for two years after the Nazis start rounding them up; the inevitable conflicts and squabbles of otherwise patient people confined like cats in a sack; their eventual discovery by the authorities.

The attic set by William P. Wieters is spacious enough for movement but cluttered enough to indicate cramped quarters for the eight confined characters. The most chilling moment in the play is not at the inevitable end but rather at the beginning. Yellow Stars of David sewn onto their clothing, they enter one by one on June 6, 1942. Toting meager possessions, they look around at a small space that could very well be their coffin. On the outside, they could not use libraries or even walk on the sunny side of a street. Here they cannot even risk too long a peek at sunshine if they part the blackout curtains.

In the midst of this is Anne (Jillian Blevins), a 12-year-old whirlwind of optimism in this emotional desert. She is as devoted to her soft-spoken father (Nicholas J. Foehr) as she is resentful of the mild discipline of her mother (Jaclyn G. Marfuggi). Her quiet, undemanding sister, Margot (Shelly Cohen), is the only daughter her mother loves, she is convinced. They share these attic rooms with another family. Mr. Van Daan (Donald J. Dallaire) is tense and harsh with his family, and Mrs. Van Daan (Alison Kantrowich) is nearly as bubbly as Anne, with a lifetime of layered pretensions. Their 16-year-old son, Peter (Kyle A. Maddock), is a nervous boy who speaks little and is usually hunched over a cat he keeps in his room. Still, he is the only romantic interest in sight for our young heroine, so we all have our hopes up.

The two families have not been arbitrarily gathered off the streets by the selfless Dutch. Mr. Frank owned the business below them, which he still runs through his partner Harry Kraler (Ian Richardson). Their connection to the outside world — food, library books, news — is a friend named Miep (Erin M. Olson). After 6 p.m. when everyone downstairs has left, she pulls aside the bookcase concealing the door to their hiding place. Eventually, she asks them to take in another man desperate to hide, a dentist named Albert Dussel (William Handcock-Brainerd). Of course, they do.

Since they cannot run water or even cough before evening without fear of discovery, tensions are bound to build to snapping points. When they hear a siren, they freeze until it passes.

Nearly a year and a half into their internal exile, Peter loosens up enough to comfort a more thoughtful Anne, and for the first time they have a lengthy conversation and become friends. Blevins’s Anne has been a charmingly vivacious child. Maddock’s Peter is up to this shift in tone too, slipping naturally from self-conscious wreck into a young man giddily in love for the first time. In this production, her first kiss is not wasted on a child.

Toward the end Anne has the last word, through that observation that has helped millions of adolescents put their own troubles in perspective and challenged them to think beyond themselves: "I still believe in spite of everything that people are really good at heart." The play also has Anne recite prescient words from the diary that are a wish fulfilled: "I want to be useful and bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death."