Powerhouse produces ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’

LACONIA — Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative, the resident theater company of the Colonial Theatre in Laconia, will produce Wendy Kesselman’s adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning play “The Diary of Anne Frank” by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett with shows Oct. 10-12.  The original 1956 play was scripted based on the newly published diary, one of the most important works of literature in the 20th Century.

Anne Frank spent two years in a secret annex behind her father’s Amsterdam office building with seven others in hiding from the Nazis who had taken over the Netherlands in 1940 and began instituting the same restrictive laws for Jews as they had done in Germany, Anne’s original home, before eventually beginning to deport Holland’s Jews to concentration camps.  Anne’s diary documents her time in hiding and deals with the hopes, despairs, fears, and desires of a young person on the verge of adulthood in a scary world. 

The cast of “The Diary of Anne Frank” includes many Powerhouse veterans as well as a couple of newcomers to the group.  Anne will be played by Maci Johnson, who was recognized as outstanding actress in a musical at last year’s NH Theatre Awards for her performance as Winnie Foster in “Tuck Everlasting.” 

She is joined by Powerhouse vets Jakob Stone and Kate Flower as her parents; Tamara McGonagle, Logan Currier, and Kenny Aber as the Van Daan family; Jim Gocha as Mr Dussel; Emilee Thompson as Miep; and Powerhouse newcomers Estelle Carr as Margot and Dan Arlen as Mr Kraler. Rounding out the cast are Brendan Berube, Connor Butt, and Chuck Fray.

The cast will be directed by Powerhouse’s Bryan Halperin who was inspired to put the show on the schedule when he saw one of the Powerhouse kids reading the diary during  a rehearsal for another show last season.

“I asked the girl if she was reading the book for school and she said that she was just reading it because she was interested in it,” he said. “I asked a few of the kids around her if they knew of the diary and they all did. I thought it was worth bringing the story to life since so many kids were aware of the book and/or had read it.”

For more information, visit powerhousenh.org.