Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • Page TAB-37

GO THEATER Writer's Theatre' small space good fit for Anne Frank' SAVERIO TRUGLI AWRITERS THEATRE PHOTO Sophie Thatcher, 14, of Evanston, plays the title role in "The Diary of Anne Frank" at Writers Theatre. is Show runs through June in Glencoe By Catey Sullivan Pioneer Press "In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart" Those are the final words in Anne Frank's diary, written shortly before Nazis burst into her "secret annex" and marched her family toward the death camps. Of the eight people living in the annex tucked behind a false wall on a building in Amsterdam, only Anne's father, Otto Frank, survived. In Wendy Kesselman's adaptation of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hack-ett's dramatization of Anne's diary, Otto Frank provides a coda at the close of the show opening Feb. 24 at Writers Theatre.

He explains where and how everyone died and how he managed to survive. Like everything else in the show, there's a sense of claustrophobia about the speech. Otto Frank is close enough to the audience so that they can feel his breath. "This space," says director Kimberly Senior of the tiny square at the back of the Books of Vernon story," is the only reason I'm directing this. The world doesn't need another big proscenium staging of this play.

I feel like what happens when we watch this play here, is that our empathy increases 10 fold because we have such immediate access." Immediate in that you could reach out and touch the actors. (Don't) "It's the story of psychological terror of these eight people who are trapped in this space for two years," Senior says. "There is no privacy. You can't even go to the bathroom. You get The Diary of Anne Frank' Through June 28 Writers Theatre, 664 Vernon Glencoe 847-242-6000; angry at someone and you can't get away from them.

They're right in front of you. You can't avoid touching them or bumping into them. What does that do to you? It's a form of torture. If someone has a cough, everyone is up all night. Our access to their terror is so much more real." For 14-year-old Sophie Thatcher, an eighth grader at Nichols Middle School in Evanston, the show is a break from her usual fare of musical theater.

Sophie was recently seen in Drury Lane's "Oliver," Light Opera Works' "The Secret the Actors Training School's "Seussical." Like Anne, Sophie keeps a diary, although she says she's not nearly as "consistent" as Anne was. "Anne was incredibly intelligent, and so open with her feelings and the way she was able to express them," Sophie says. "She was also so optimistic. It's amazing how optimistic she stayed. And it's that optimism, that's what I want people to take from the play." Despite that optimism, all of the residents of the secret annex are hit hard, by survivor's guilt.

Anne has nightmares of her best friend starving behind a barbed wire fence. Margot (Anne's older sister) is well aware that she's the reason they're all there the family took refuge when Margot got the "call up." "I think it brings up a lot of great questions about American isolationism and why it took us so look to get into the war," says Senior. "Tell me again why we weren't bombing train tracks in Europe? Today, there are still entire populations being wiped up in the name of Maybe they don't touch our lives so much in Chicago. Maybe they should." HI.