Why You Should See Theater J's "Compulsion or The House Behind"

Image found here

I had a subscription with the DCJCC's Theater J this season, and I saw three shows (I saw Tuesdays with Morrie, and I wrote a blog post for Becoming Dr. Ruth. Read it!). The last one in the package was Rinne B. Groff's Compulsion or The House Behind. I didn't know much about it other than that it involved Anne Frank. It's really a story based upon the writer Meyer Levin's obsession with the story of Anne Frank and getting it out to the masses. I read a little bit about this in the book, Treasures from the Attic, since he had a close relationship with Otto Frank once the diary was discovered and they were trying to get it published, translated, etc. to share with the world.

I thought this play was really interesting! Here are some cools things about it that you should check out:

The character of Sid Silver, played by Paul Morella, is based on Meyer Levin. He is haunted by his infatuation with Anne Frank and her story, and a puppet is a manifestation of his thoughts. Image found here.

• There are puppets! Okay, I know that sounds creepy, but how many plays do you get to see with puppets in them? Matt Acheson and Eirin Stevenson were the puppeteers, and the way they make the puppets move is so lifelike! Simple nods of the head, a slight gesture of the hands... they almost seem real! 

Marcus Kyd (L) and Kimberly Gilbert play multiple roles. Image found here.

• Two of the actors play multiple roles, and even do different voices and accents! Kimberly Gilbert not only plays Miss Mermin of the publishing world and Sid Silver's wife (who is French), but she also does the voice of the puppet Anne! Marcus Kyd plays several businessmen related to publishing the screenplay of The Diary of Anne Frank, as well as a director of a soldiers' theater company in Israel, Israeli accent included! After the performance I saw, there was a call back with the actors, and it was interesting to hear their normal, day-to-day voices. Their real voices were almost unexpected!

• It's clever. I like how there are little nuggets sprinkled throughout. For example, we all know that Kyd is playing several similar characters, and parts of the script are almost breaking the fourth wall, letting us know that they know they're in on the joke that we are supposed to buy that this is a different man each time. Even the title has an interesting backstory. Compulsion is the title of a work of fiction that Meyer Levin wrote based on the Leopold and Loeb murder, and the House Behind is a more literal translation of "the hidden annex." So it's a combination of the name of one of his own pieces of work, combined with that of Anne Frank, and the word "compulsion," meaning an obsession, is very fitting.

• Anything related to the Holocaust helps enforce the mantra "never again." Theater J's associate artistic director, Johanna Gruenhut, wrote a great piece in the play's program called, "How We Remember and Never Forget." I loved how she wrote about memory versus history, remembering versus not forgetting. History is information about the past that is recorded, while memory is fluid through time and lives in each of us. And remembering is something each of us can do individually, but 'not forgetting' is something that we all have to do together, like saying the Mourner's Kaddish as a group to honor the dead. Even though Anne Frank was murdered nearly 80 years ago, her storytelling is memory that lives on, and any way we continue to talk about her story, like in a play such as this one, we never forget what happened to her and six million other Jews. 

There are only a few more days to see this play! Buy your tickets now!