The play "The Diary of Anne Frank" is sort of a weird one for me to review. I have been to the secret annex in Amsterdam. I have seen the pages of 1940s movie stars she tore from magazines and tacked to her wall as an escape from the mundane existence she lived day after day in a space the size of most living rooms.



The antic sanctuary where she spent more than two years of her life is now the Anne Frank Museum, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Netherlands alongside hash bars, the famous Red Light District and the canals that cut through the city. People wait for two to three or even more hours to walk up the stairs of the otherwise insignificant storefront and trod the few steps behind the bookcase to see the handful of rooms that have been preserved in time. The furniture has long since been removed to make way for more people, so the rooms seem much larger than they must have been to her since they were filled with beds and tables when she entered the annex more than 60 years ago. But she likely would have also felt as if she had just left. Her pictures are there on the wall, preserved behind a pane of glass to avoid the tens of thousands of fingers that would otherwise want to either touch or steal them. Her little doodles also can be found on the walls and window sills that she must have almost unconsciously drawn as the days passed into weeks then into months in the small rooms overlooking a central courtyard she was never allowed to see in the daylight or risk being discovered by someone by chance seeing her in the window. The windows were even painted black to avoid the few lights they used from streaming into the streets below. The simple statement that the residents of the secret annex lived in constant fear of discovery takes on a new meaning when someone walks into the rooms they lived in and learns of the lengths they took to avoid being arrested and deported to certain death — all efforts that ultimately failed once they were betrayed by a yet-unknown Nazi collaborator.



I tell you all of this not to brag over my world travels and all of the stamps on my passport but to simply state that this version of the story of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, with further adaptations by Wendy Kesselman, comes as close to my thoughts of what life in the annex was like as a play can do. All is not about the struggle to survive against the threats lingering just a few floors down but about the internal threats of the interpersonal struggles between the members of this hidden band of eight Jews — all through the pen of a pre-teen girl who was never able to again see life without war and death.



Kendra Phillips pulls off the role of Anne. She is both childish and mature beyond her years as the immortal young girl who was also struggling with perpetual girl issues at a time in life when death meant a simple knock on the door. I only wish Phillips was younger. It's not her fault; it’s just that it was a bit of a stretch that she was 13.



Joseph Grant, as always, did well in his role — this time as Anne's father, Otto. Tom Brickeland did equally well as Mr. VanDaan.  The balance of the cast was solid although not standout by most measures.



“The Diary of Anne Frank” plays at the Lakewood Playhouse through March 4 with shows at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. on Sunday at  Lakewood Playhouse, 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd., Lakewood. There will be an actor benefit show at 8 p.m. March 1, $12-$18; 253.588.0042, www.lakewoodplayhouse.org.