Marylebone Theatre, til 23 November 2024

⭐⭐⭐⭐

A funny, intelligent exploration of modern Judaism.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank might take its name from one of the Holocaust’s most famous victims, but it’s very much a play for our times. When Florida native Debbie warns her husband Phil not to mention “the war” in front of their soon-to-arrive Israeli guests, it’s not WWII she’s referring to but the very-present Gaza conflict. As it turns out, both wars come up during the couples’ occasionally warm, often confrontational exchanges, as writer Nathan Englander skillfully links the past to the present to cleverly ruminate on the state of modern Judaism. 

The entire narrative takes place in Debbie and Phil’s bougie Florida home, where they live a comfortable middle-class life with their son Trevor, a college dropout. Though both identify as culturally Jewish, they’ve long since abandoned the strictures of faith. Their guests for the day are the ultra-Orthodox Yerusham and Shoshana, American-born Jews who moved to Jerusalem to raise their family in a community that shares their devout views. Shoshana and Debbie were once the best of friends, partying sorority sisters, but haven’t spoken since their lives took such very different paths. A chance Facebook connection sees them reunite after 20 years, but with each couple’s experience of Jewish life very different, the stage is set for some epic disagreements around the dinner table. 

About Anne Frank is a pretty simple play in the sense that there isn’t much of a plot through-line. Though we do learn later in the story of an ulterior motive for Yerusham and Shoshana’s visit, most of the play simply consists of the conversations between the two couples. Discussion topics range from the political (the Gaza war, the rise of American Naziism in the Trump era) to the deeply personal (parenting, marriage, sex). Englander expertly derives drama from these exchanges not just through the to-be-expected conflict between the devout and the secular, but by creating characters that are interesting, complex and often surprising. Each has their own unique attitude to their Judaism, and the battle lines are not often clearly drawn between the two couples. When Phil jokes about his idea for a Holocaust theme park, it’s Debbie that is horrified while Yerusham laughs the hardest. When Yerusham is angered by Phil’s impious request to touch his wife’s real hair (hidden under a wig), Shoshana takes a more playful approach. I noticed at some points a subtle and clever arrangement of the allyships along gender lines, with Phil and Yerusham more likely to escalate the conflict where Debbie and Shoshana seek to conciliate.

The addition of Trevor as a sort of interloper in the warzone is deft – it throws all the characters off-balance and adds a third, altogether different voice to the conversation. Though he is immediately portrayed as the stereotypical college student – a dropkick leftie, stoned and unemployed – he quickly proves himself intellectually equal to his elders. After initially shocking the Israelites by disavowing his Judaism in favour of the ‘Pastafarian’ faith, he very astutely outlines his criticisms of the inherent inequality of religion and its incompatibility with equal rights. Trevor also appears on-stage at the beginning of each scene to introduce it to the audience, addressing us directly; this is amusing without being gimmicky and actor Gabriel Howell brings enough charm to make Trevor instantly the centre of attention. 

The scene breaks aren’t the only time About Anne Frank cracks a joke; this is a very funny play. Of course, it’s a classic odd-couple set-up (or I guess in this case, odd-couple-of-couples), and there are plenty of laughs to be found in highlighting the foursome’s differences. There’s also a streak of quite dark humour that runs through the play, whether it’s Shoshana joking that Debbie would be “stoned to death” in Jerusalem for her clothing or Phil enlisting the whole group to help spitball Holocaust-themed restaurant names (“The wine-al solution”). Without wanting to stereotype a culture I have little experience with, this struck me as a particularly Jewish style of comedy – gallows humour developed from a shared historic trauma. 

Indeed, a major theme of the play is how Jews worldwide collectively live with and manifest the horrors of the Holocaust. Humour is Phil’s default reaction; Debbie struggles to overcome her sorrow; for Shoshana and Yerusham it fuels their dogmatic belief in the importance of rebuilding a Jewish world. The four-handed set-up allows Englander to explore these varied responses – and indeed, the overall experience of living as a Jew today – in a nuanced way. While the horrors of the Gaza war don’t go unacknowledged or uncriticised, Shoshana and Yerusham aren’t made out to be monsters; nor are Debbie and Phil let off the hook as angels simply for being more modern Americans. The reference to Anne Frank becomes apparent in the final scenes, and though the parlour game the characters take part in together is particularly morbid, it’s a suitably moving and thoughtful end to the story. 

I’d normally take a moment in a review to shout out the director (Patrick Marber) or some members of the crew or cast (really the whole reason I went to see the play was for West Wing alumnus Joshua Malina, who is fantastic and predictably wry as Phil). But I really think the strength of this play lies largely in the writing. It’s smart, it’s funny, and it uses well-drawn characters to adroitly reflect on the many facets of being a modern Jew. An apt story to tell in our times.