"When I write I shake off all cares. But I want to achieve more than that. I want to be useful and bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met. I want to go on living even after my death." - Excerpt from Anne's diary

"And so you will, Anne, in the echoes of this production and other productions yet to come. For the most important aspect of your story is that you put a face, a heart, and a personality to the stories of millions of people and through you, we are able to realize the inhuman darkness of the Holocaust and its terrible cost to humanity." - Nancy Silva, Director

So stated the program for this play, The Diary of Anne Frank , leaving this reporter -- having not read the book -- with rising expectations, wondering just what this play was going to be about, what was going to be portrayed in it, and what the message would be. However, those touching quotations did not disappoint.

It begins with the Franks in Amsterdam, in 1942, when they first go into hiding in a hidden room in Mr. Frank's office. The Franks, consisting   of Anne, her sister Margot, her mother Mrs. Frank, and her father Mr. Frank (played by Lauren Nardozzi, Rebecca J. Mason, Cynthia Drumbor, and Brian Rife) are then later joined by other Jewish people seeking refuge. These were the Van Daans, Peter, his mother Mrs. Van Daan, and his father Mr. Van

Daan (played by Andrew Struck, Colleen L. Fischer, and Fred Golbahar) and later on the dentist, Mr. Drussel, played by Marc Berman.

For two years these lives were sequestered together, without relief, living as though they didn't exist, not even allowed to wear shoes or flush their toilet at certain times of the day for fear of attracting attention. They lived in constant fear of discovery, and the Nazis that were sure to follow. Their only outside source of contact was their radio, which they also could only play at certain times, and their savior, Miep (played by Suzanne Neill) who brought news and nourishment to those depraved, huddled people. You can imagine what happens to people after two years of that.

The cast in its entirety performed with astounding reality, the chemistry between them tangible and complimentary, lending to presenting the show in a very authentic way. Anne Frank, though, was represented with such talent as to leave the viewer with a sense of wonderment as to what is truly important in life, and how we make in impact in it. This was felt in the gradual growing of that little, vibrant but spoiled girl that went into confinement to the girl who, nearing the end of her two-year self-imprisonment, is matured beyond measuring, one who "...wants to be useful and bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met..." as was said in the

play by that not-so-little girl by the end of the roughly hour-and-a-half production.

The efforts of the crew, also resounded magnificently in the play, accenting the lifelike acting in an almost tangible aura of Holland in the '40s, through the use the music and sound effects (like radio clips of BBC and the Fuhrer himself chanting "sieg heil"), and also in the pictures interlaced throughout the play that were projected on the background, representing each room as the events were taking place in it, giving a sense of "really" being there.

This was an enthralling and chillingly thought-provoking story that touched one profoundly in the documentation of the events of separate, Jewish lives brought together in hopes of sanctuary, in a place and a time where being Jewish meant death in a Nazi camp. This play was a fascinating study of eight Jewish lives during the time of the Holocaust, forced to live with each other in complete captivity, presented in a segmented, diary-like way reminiscent of the origin of this story, Anne Frank's diary. It was presented with great skill that made the roughly hour-and-a-half show seems only a few minutes.

Nancy Silva has indeed "put a face, a heart, and a personality to the stories of millions of people...of the Holocaust and its terrible cost to humanity" in this production of The Diary of Anne Frank.