I was eager to see the world premiere of Rinne Groff's Compulsion at the Yale Repertory Theatre both because the subject matter intrigued me and because I have a nostalgic fondness for Mandy Patinkin. After not seeing him perform live for nearly three decades, this is the second time in eighteen months, after the Classic Stage production of The Tempest (discussed here).
(Left: a very nice publicity still which bears no resemblance to the actual set.)
While I am familiar with the story of Anne Frank and read and loved her diary as a child, I didn't known anything about Meyer Levin, who was instrumental in getting the diary published in the United States and then began an obsessive, decades-long attempt to get his staged version presented. Compulsion takes the story from his first visits to a New York publisher to promote the diary in general and Anne as a Jewish victim, rather than a generic, religion-free symbol of victimhood. That's entirely worthwhile, but Levin went right 'round the bend when Anne's father licensed a different writer's play based on the diary and proceeded to spend decades trying fruitlessly to get his version produced, suing everyone from Doubleday to Frank himself in the process.
The title of the play has a double meaning: Compulsion was also the name of Levin's most famous work, a book chronicling the Leopold and Loeb murder case (famous for Clarence Darrow's great victory in saving the two from the death penalty.) Levin did something similar to what Groffe has done here, giving a fictional veneer to actual events.
Patinkin does a fine job of embodying Levin's obsession via the fictional character of Sid Silver, and fellow actors Hannah Cabell and Stephen Barker Turner ably portray all of the other characters. Unfortunately, though, I found the play as tedious as Levin's contemporaries no doubt found him. It's entirely possible to be annoying in a good cause, and Levin/Silver crosses that line very early on, until his obsession seems as much an exercise in ego as a genuine desire to not see Anne's Jewishness ignored. And I just didn't much enjoy watching two hours of a persecution complex, no matter how justified.
I'm sure it says something about my shallowness as an audience member and it certainly reflects my personal taste in theater, but I would much prefer to see Patinkin employ his considerable talents in roles that are more...theatrical: either in musical theater or in roles like Prospero that give some scope for his presence and charisma. His portrayal of Sid Silver is a credit to his acting ability, but a waste of his larger-than-life gifts.
I also had a serious problem with the use of puppetry in the play. Levin had a puppet theater in real life, and no doubt having Anne Frank portrayed by a marionette is intended to express something profound about people's use of her and her diary after her death. That's not a bad idea. But the actual execution made me shudder. The puppet itself was downright creepy. It was recognizably Anne Frank, but between its gauntness, its grey-green skin tone, and its unrealistic movement, the first thing that came to mind is "zombie," which is just about the most callous and disgusting thing I can imagine to do with Anne Frank. The puppet's voice was too mature and too shrill, and Groff, insanely, decided to write lines for Anne as a sort of cynical commentator. As if Anne didn't write much better herself! It was just horrific, with the hideous culmination being when Anne popped up in bed with Silver's long-suffering wife. (Left, Patinkin with the Anne marionette; click to enlarge.)
Overall, I just can't recommend Compulsion. But if you must see for yourself, it's more-or-less up through February 28th, running on an irregular schedule due to Patinkin's concert commitments. Tickets are available from the Yale Rep box office. It's co-produced by The Public Theater in New York and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, so it might also be moving on to those venues sometime in the future.
In semi-serendipity, I just got the official version of The Diary of Anne Frank out of the library. I read it so long ago I didn't even know there was a "definite version"!
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | February 12, 2010 at 06:45 PM
it says something about my shallowness as an audience member
I hate to contradict you, Susan, but 'shallowness' is a word that can hardly be aplied to you.
Darrow was involved in the Leopold and Loeb case? I didn't know that. I think of him as being associated with the Scopes trial, but I had no idea he dealt with other famous cases. (Of course, when I think of Darrow, I can't help but see Spencer Tracy.)
Posted by: Serge | February 13, 2010 at 11:32 AM
Erm, that should have been "definitive" up there.
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | February 13, 2010 at 05:17 PM
Marilee,
Apparently they found a few more pages relatively recently and have added them to published editions. I will have to get a new copy sometime.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 14, 2010 at 07:35 AM
Serge,
as a kid and loved it. It talks about his involvement with labor cases and death penalty cases along with the Scopes trial. I still have my battered old copy on the shelf.
I read Clarence Darrow for the Defense
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 14, 2010 at 07:38 AM
Thanks for reminding me, Susan. You had mentionned that book last year, but this time I made sure I wouldn't forget. I just went to Alibris and bought a copy of the 1941 Doubleday edition.
Posted by: Serge | February 14, 2010 at 09:46 AM
Susan, no, the original editor of Frank's diary purposely took out all the words about sex. Apparently she mentions being interested in another female and he thought it would take away from who she was. But the entire diary has been out since 1996 and I didn't know that until there was a foofooraw in a local county.
The word that came from the principal of a school was that a mother wanted the book taken away from the class (with her daughter) because of the sex and he would take it away. The next article was from the school superintendent who said the mother just didn't want her daughter to read outloud like the others are and they will keep the book.
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | February 14, 2010 at 07:08 PM
Marilee,
No, these are actual new pages; see here. They were pulled by her father because they contained unflattering comments about her relationship with her mother and her parents' marriage. They were suppressed until after her father's second wife's death in 1998.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 15, 2010 at 03:29 PM
We're talking about different editions. :) Here's the one I was talking about. It was published in 1996. Yours is published in 2001.
Here's the two articles from the WashPost which alerted me to the definitive edition.
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | February 15, 2010 at 04:19 PM
I wasn't talking about any edition in particular, just noting that there are more pages added recently that had been suppressed for many years. So the "definitive" edition from 1996 is not in fact definitive. I don't know what the most current edition is, but at some point would like to get one which includes the most recently released pages.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | February 15, 2010 at 04:36 PM
Well, the intro to the "definitive" edition says they put back in 30% more content than the original book had. I can't find a book after that (although there's a movie) and the article you linked to just said there were five pages, not that they'd been put into a book. Some of the things the article says are on the pages are also in the definitive version.
Posted by: Marilee J. Layman | February 16, 2010 at 03:56 PM