Theatre in Review: Slam Frank (Asylum NYC)

	Jaz Zepatos, Olivia Bernabe, Austen Horne. Photo: Jasper Lewis

Has anyone told Cynthia Ozick about Slam Frank? You may recall that, in 1997, the noted novelist and essayist ignited a controversy in the pages of The New Yorker, suggesting that, given the frivolous and sentimental uses to which Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl have been put over the years, it might have been better for it to have been confined to the ash heap of history. (She was exercised by an impending Broadway revival of the play based on the diary. There's no word on what she thought about Yours, Anne, the 1985 musical, which swathed the original property in suffocating reverence.) Now 97, Ozick might be pushed into the next world if anyone tells her about Slam Frank, a satirical hip-hop musical that uses the diary to spoof the current theatrical rage for all things politically correct.

Credit where it is due: Behind its cheeky, cabaret-sketch demeanor, Slam Frank is strikingly ambitious. And it is high time somebody took on the political piety currently running through the theatre community like a bad cold. The show announces its intentions as Andrew Fox, as the director of a "highly respected and forward-thinking regional theater company," fumbles his way through a land acknowledgement, peering at his scrambled notes and coming up with. "Whoever they are, they were here first, and we are here now, and shame on us. Okay?" Polishing his professional credits, he also cites his role in the series American Horror Story: Rape Museum. (The joke is so on-target that I had to remind myself that it wasn't a real example of Ryan Murphy's anthology series).

With that out of the way, the director introduces his new musical, which brings Anne's diary "powerfully into our modern century." He notes that, as Germans living in Amsterdam, the Franks were immigrants, and, as such, were subject to "fierce bigotry," much like "the members of our LGBTQUIA communities that we know, and cherish, and love, and respect. and believe in, and raise up, and speak for, and defend." On the cliche-o-meter, the speech is a solid one hundred.

And we're off, into a musical about life in the secret annex, designed to stroke every aggrieved contemporary minority. Anne is Latina -- she prefers to be called "Anita" -- receiving spiritual messages from her deceased abuela. Edith (Austen Horne), her mother, is Black, perfectly costumed for a revival of Once on This Island, an expert trafficker in moral authority. Both Otto (Rocky Paterra), her father, and Peter (Alex Lewis), her adolescent friend, are bursting to come out of the closet; the latter has an entire number celebrating his nonbinary status. Mr. Van Daan, Peter's father (Fox again), is a cheerful repository of hateful white male supremacist tropes, and Mrs. Van Daan (Jaz Zepatos) is an airheaded housewife on the liberation track. ("Oh, the world would be so much better if we cast all men aside!")

The gags are delivered in rat-a-tat fashion, and some of them are hilarious. Otto's constant declaration of various neurodiverse conditions (including, but not limited to, "on the spectrum" and attention-deficit disorder) is a steady source of amusement. (He is seen surreptitiously swiping on an iPhone, looking for potential boyfriends.) Edith, commandingly played by Horne, stops with the show, ranting, "This attic is the patriarchy." Announcing plans to take back "this theatre from the white man who stole it," she growls, "Fuck you, Neil Simon! Double fuck you, David Mamet!" Mr. Van Daan (Fox again, rolling out his best bullying manner), flees the premises, preferring the Nazi threat to this "awful, sickening, diverse, fluid, intersectional, non-hierarchical, radically inclusive environment." In such moments, Joel Sinensky's book and Fox's songs are spiked with the sheer glee of young cutups breaking boundaries and getting away with it.

But the best satire takes an existing, real-life trend and pushes it to ludicrous extremes, and, using this yardstick, Slam Frank makes little sense. When theatre artists decide to fluff up vintage material for modern consumption, they usually seize on fictional pop entertainments: See Daniel Fish's grim take on Oklahoma!, which turned Rodgers and Hammerstein's upbeat vision of the frontier into a haunted landscape marked by sexual assault and manslaughter. The idea of converting The Diary of Anne Frank into an identity politics festival isn't even halfway plausible; no theatre company would touch it. And, really, what is the point of applying such ideas to a totally unconnected piece of material? An idea that might sustain a ten or fifteen-minute sketch is unacceptably stretched to the two-hour mark.

The show takes a sharp left turn into dark waters in its final half-hour, about which I have been repeatedly sworn to secrecy. I will note that it brings the narrative into the present day, and it will likely be offensive (and, arguably, will seem antisemitic) to many, although, to be fair, most of them are unlikely to sign up for an entertainment titled Slam Frank. In any case, the script can't sustain such seriousness, and a production that, whatever its flaws, was light on its feet turns loud and shrill. The last section is consumed with the search for a decent finale; I counted at least three attempts.

Despite this, Slam Frank has all the signs of being a sleeper hit, thanks, I suppose, to its nonstop irreverence; clearly. It is sending a message that audiences are only ready to receive. The cast is indefatigable. Aside from those already mentioned, Olivia Bernabe shoulders the role of Anne with brio. Anya Van Hoogstraten is largely silent as Margot, Anne's sister, until the climax, when she terrifyingly finds her voice. CJ Howard's set design accommodates Zack Lobel's projection design, which ranges from a sky filled with Stars of David to turn-of-the-century immigrants and Nicholas Ferrari's live capture of the onstage antics; he also designed the solid lighting. Sarah Lockwood's costumes amusingly cover many periods and styles. Until the climax, Sam Lafrage's sound design feels thoroughly natural and unamplified; Lafrage also directed, maintaining an appropriate air of wide-eyed optimism throughout.

Love it or not, Slam Frank is an interesting phenomenon, offering yet another sign (as does Oh, Mary!) that audiences are fed up with shows that fall all over themselves declaring their progressive bona fides; the paying patrons would rather laugh than be inspired. And the show's grand designs, partly hidden by a cultivated casualness, are something to note. It doesn't work, but it is not to be dismissed. Anyway, if you run into Cynthia Ozick, mum's the world. --David Barbour