{"id":627826,"date":"2026-09-26T05:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T05:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/627826\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T05:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T05:52:10","slug":"a-couple-of-times-people-walked-out-how-an-anne-frank-musical-became-the-hottest-theater-ticket-of-the-year-off-broadway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/627826\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A couple of times people walked out\u2019: how an Anne Frank musical became the hottest theater ticket of the year | Off-Broadway"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s difficult to not invoke the term \u201cwoke\u201d when discussing Slam Frank<\/a>, the 2025 musical that reimagines Anne Frank<\/a> as a pansexual Latina. Controversial even before its first performance, it giddily satirizes identity politics through its show-within-a-show structure, in which a progressive theatre company attempts to modernize the Holocaust victim\u2019s story by paralleling it to the struggles faced by marginalized people today. Here, the mother of \u201cAnita\u201d is Black, her father is neurodivergent and, while hiding in Amsterdam, they are very much immigrants.<\/p>\n

Creator Andrew Fox recognizes \u201ca temptation to categorize it as anti-woke art\u201d, but points readily at the show\u2019s fans and detractors, who fall across every conceivable party line, and cautions against one-note interpretations. \u201cI think the piece is just trying to grapple with the last 15 years of cultural and intellectual upheaval and get some comedy out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Following last year\u2019s sold-out run at the Asylum NYC comedy club (now retroactively referred to as a workshop), it will premiere off-Broadway proper at the Orpheum theatre on 4 October.<\/p>\n

The idea started online, if you can believe it, when Fox stumbled across a 2022 tweet<\/a> dissecting Frank\u2019s alleged white privilege. The composer-lyricist got to work on a hip-hop musical inspired by that absurd debate, and reconnected with an old school friend, writer Joel Sinensky, who suggested they implement the backstage concept. (Before then, Fox says, \u201cit was closer to Oleanna<\/a> than to Waiting for Guffman.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have many things that we disagree on, but the thing that we were always very united on is this feeling that we were tired of didactic theater,\u201d Sinensky says. \u201cA lot of the work that\u2019s been made commercially in the last decade has been very direct about what you\u2019re supposed to take away from it, and we wanted to write something that was a reaction to that \u2013 that was about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

So while the current sociopolitical moment (post-#MeToo, post-Covid, post-\u201cWoke 1.0<\/a>\u201d) is certainly a target in the musical\u2019s line of fire, its form lampoons the art that has resulted from that zeitgeist. Hamilton<\/a> is a major inspiration \u2013 if that\u2019s the word \u2013 with Slam Frank\u2019s logo riffing on the blockbuster bio-musical\u2019s own, and its musical sensibility imitates its verbose, sloganeering rap.<\/p>\n

What it doesn\u2019t borrow from Hamilton, purposefully, is a clear ideology. The production\u2019s social media, managed by Fox, has been a masterclass in subterfuge and trolling. (\u201cFasting is Fatphobic,\u201d reads an Instagram post shared on Yom Kippur.) Fox, who is Jewish, says one of their guiding intentions was to never convey \u201ca specific viewpoint or message\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe committed pretty early to making something that, anytime we feel like we\u2019re making one point and it\u2019s starting to feel like a lecture, we swing in another direction,\u201d he says. \u201cIt lets us focus on making the piece as effective as possible at getting reactions, getting laughs, getting shock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sinensky says he revels in Reddit reviews of the show, which alternately label him and Fox as pro-Zionist, antisemitic, extremist right- and leftwing: \u201cThat, to me, is one of the best indicators that we succeeded \u2013 that people can see it and love it or get angry for different reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Online chatter aside, reviews have been largely positive. The show\u2019s publicist (understandably) makes the most out of an X post<\/a> by Ben Brantley, the former New York Times theater critic, arguing that it \u201cmay be the most important new show around\u201d. Its director, Sam LaFrage, recalls a visit from Patti LuPone<\/a>, who he says came backstage at Asylum NYC to mention how moved she\u2019d been.<\/p>\n

Austen Horne, Amelia Louise Barr and Olivia Berna\u0301be in Slam Frank. Photograph: Shawn Salley<\/p>\n

\u201cI get really excited by something that makes me feel like art is back,\u201d says LaFrage. \u201cLike, we can do plays that make people uncomfortable, and say the things that have been left unsaid because we\u2019ve been worried about getting canceled, you know? The play within the play is a great container to exercise that right, to be artists. Slam Frank is about what\u2019s happened to art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Fox and Sinensky, LaFrage feels the musical is a way to poke fun at his own \u201cwoke\u201d past, something he thinks also legitimizes the honesty of its satirical intent. \u201cI used to do drag queen family theater downtown,\u201d he says with a mix of pride and chagrin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Trump got elected, obviously that was awful, but I let woke get the best of me,\u201d says Walker Stovall, who plays a character modeled after the camera operators in big-budget Jamie Lloyd<\/a> productions. Like LaFrage, he speaks with an earnest tongue-in-cheek. \u201cYou should be critical about the way you think and about what you\u2019re taught, but I think when I was letting it get in the way of connecting with other people is when it all went bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox echoes the sentiment that respectability politics have served an opposite effect. Many of the characters in Slam Frank often get bogged down in well-meaning, barely intelligible jargon. (At one point, someone wonders \u201cthrough what assemblage of counter-hegemonic labor shall the scaffolding of our interlocking systems of oppression be rendered obsolete?\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very strange way of speaking and writing that kind of detaches people from their own thoughts,\u201d he says. \u201cPart of what our show tries to do is represent that experience of being part of a culture that is becoming less human and more abstract, and how funny or horrifying that can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, the musical was previously ejected from a highbrow workshop hosted by BMI, the music licensing organization, for that un-abstracted bravado. According to Fox, \u201cwhat got it kicked out was the non-binary coming out song, and as far as I know, there wasn\u2019t a single non-binary person in that room. Then the next year, a bunch of new non-binary people joined the workshop and that was their favorite song in the show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Olivia Bern\u00e1be, the non-binary actor who plays Anita, says they find the number \u201chysterical\u201d. They first learned of the show through Fox\u2019s TikTok videos, and thought it was \u201cjust an intense commit-to-the-bit, but with really good music\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that there are people who do get offended,\u201d says Bern\u00e1be. \u201cThere have been a couple of times where people have walked out; I don\u2019t know if they forget that it\u2019s satire, or it could be that everyone has a different threshold for it. We are teasing, but not actually making fun of the identity. What the show plays with is the idea of your identity equaling your ethics, because that\u2019s just not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cast of Slam Frank. Photograph: Shawn Salley<\/p>\n

There\u2019s plenty of button-pushing atop that righteous jestering: the entrance to the Orpheum\u2019s auditorium, for example, has been made to look like the bookcase which led to the Frank family\u2019s hideout, with a neon sign welcoming visitors to \u201cThe Attic\u201d. But Fox thinks \u201cthe culture was ready to move in this direction\u201d of irreverence, paraphrasing a quote from Rick Rubin<\/a>, the famous record producer, \u201cthat ideas are in the air and that somebody\u2019s gonna get them. If you don\u2019t go forward with it, that idea doesn\u2019t die with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many things in the culture reflective of things that Slam Frank is doing, so it\u2019s clearly something in the air,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s certainly questions about the manipulation of the sanctity of the Holocaust in the popular imagination. I\u2019ve gotten some emails that are like, \u2018People don\u2019t take this topic seriously anymore because of you,\u2019 and I\u2019m like, \u2018I\u2019ve been talking to people for the last three years; they were ready to not take it seriously anymore.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Slam Frank\u2019s final 20 minutes, set off by a truly audacious plot twist, are its most controversial, widening its scope from historical satire to contemporary excoriation. It was the only aspect to give Stovall any misgivings, before he recognized its value.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy gut instinct was, \u2018Don\u2019t do this to my girls,\u2019\u201d he says, half joking. \u201cI had to think about it and be like, \u2018Why do I have a problem with this? I don\u2019t actually have a problem with this. This is hilarious.\u2019 And the reason I had a problem with it is why I think it\u2019s important to put it onstage, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Slam Frank is at the Orpheum theatre, New York<\/a>, until 30 November<\/p>\n