Anne Frank: The Musical?

From The New York Times:

Anne Frank Musical to Open in Madrid

A musical based on “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank is to open next month at the Calderon Theater in Madrid. Its star will be Isabella Castillo, 13, whose mother fled with her from Cuba to Belize, where they lived in hiding before immigrating to Miami, The Guardian of London reported. The newspaper said the production, developed by Rafael Alvero, has been given the support of the Anne Frank Foundation, which holds the rights to the diary. It is adapted from the account written while Anne and her family hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam during World War II. Jan Erik Dubbelman, who heads the international department of the foundation, said: “This production respects the message of tolerance, within the tragedy, that we want to keep alive. Being in Spanish, it can also help to take the message of Anne Frank to Latin America.”

A correction to the article notes that this is not the first attempt.

Back in 1985, Frank Rich wrote an unfavorable review for The New York Times of the first attempt at a musical about Anne Frank, "Yours, Anne":

If there is any story that does not call for such prissy abstraction, stylization and symbols it is Anne Frank's. Her diary was truth, not fiction; her temporary haven in Amsterdam was in a real building, not in an interior decorator's imagination; her murder by the Nazis at Bergen-Belsen was a real murder, not a cue (as staged here) for a symbolic stage effect. If the heroism and tragedy of Anne Frank are to speak loudly to new generations, as they must, her words cannot be muffled and diminished by the archpoetic conceits and pious generalizations of "theater" like "Yours, Anne."

If the Anne Frank Foundation is behind this new attempt, let's hope that it turns out better.

At least, better than when The Diary of Anne Frank was published in North Korea

North Korea is using the Diary of Anne Frank, the moving account of the Amsterdam schoolgirl forced into hiding from the Nazis for two years, to brainwash schoolchildren into believing that President George W Bush is as evil as Hitler.

Secondary schools throughout the Stalinist state are teaching pupils that the experience of their country - which is almost completely cut off from the outside world - is directly comparable to that of the Franks family during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Schools use the diaries to teach pupils about Hitler, and then teach that America is the modern equivalent of the Nazis.

The extraordinary use of a book which, after the Bible, has sold more copies worldwide than any other work of non-fiction, emerged from a Dutch television company's visit to the reclusive state to meet pupils studying the diaries.

That article came out in 2004. Two years earlier, The Anne Frank Foundation came out on their website with this:

It was with great pleasure that the AFF supported plans to publish a North Korean edition of the Diary. It is a matter of considerable regret that there is still no Arabic edition of the Diary.

All things considered, perhaps we should greet the lack of an Arabic edition with a sigh of relief.[update: The Diary of Anne Frank was translated into Arabic in 2004]

Perhaps it is just better to let Anne Frank speak for herself.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad

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