Taste is subjective. So it goes without saying that a satirical musical very loosely based on the life of Anne Frank — who here calls herself Anita and raps many of her solos en español — is not going to pass the taste test for many theatergoers. Slam Frank, which had a monthslong run last fall at the Asylum NYC space, is the musical equivalent of a South Park episode with enough inside-theater jokes for a new installment of Forbidden Broadway. It’s brash, deliberately provocative, sometimes hilarious in a silly way, and eventually overstays its welcome. The show, with a book by Joel Sinensky and a verbally dexterous, pastiche-heavy score by Andrew Fox, takes very broad swipes at history, contemporary progressive culture, and even the left’s current fixation on Palestine.
John Aker Bow kicks things off as the artistic director of an unnamed theater troupe who delivers a precurtain speech in which he immediately misplaces his notes and fumbles a land acknowledgement: “Well, whoever they are, they were here first. We are here now. So shame on us.” He soon introduces the very 2026 concept of the show, which recenters the story of Frank around a panoply of disenfranchised people for no discernible reason other than to broaden the idea of inclusion. And that’s the point: Modern liberals eagerly and earnestly surrender space and champion diversity while obliterating historical context that proves inconvenient or counterproductive to their goals.
So how to make the story of the Jewish diarist and Holocaust victim relevant to 2026? Well, Anne (Olivia Bernábe) is now a LatinX girl with an abuela (Amelia Louise Barr, who doubles up as Anne’s mostly silent sister, Margot); her mother, Edith, is a proud Black woman who proclaims, “Commercial theater is a plantation” (Austen Horne); fellow attic dweller Peter Van Daan (Alex Lewis) is an out-and-proud nonbinary person eager to swap their yellow star patch for a rainbow flag; and father, Otto (Rocky Paterra), proclaims a multitude of conditions and disabilities to suit every situation, from neurodivergence to attention deficit disorder to closeted homosexuality. Peter’s dad, Mr. Van Daan, also played by Bow, becomes the resident old-school cis male jerk, a manspreading misogynist who runs roughshod over everyone, especially his initially submissive wife (Jaz Zepatos).
Plus, everybody sings — and sometimes raps — in a score by Fox that borrows heavily from other hip-hop histories (Hamilton and Suffs most notably) as well as classic pop by Dusty Springfield and others. Bernábe and Lewis are particularly powerful singers, blending chest and head voices with ease to hit some tricky high notes while punching out jokey lyrics that include clever half-rhymes like barrio / scenario / cardio. And the rest of the cast leans into the silliness with aplomb in a madcap production under Sam LaFrage’s direction that is hyperactive enough that it might benefit from a Ritalin prescription.
LaFrage and author Sinensky throw just about everything into the mix: There’s Jamie Lloyd-style live video (designed by Zack Lobel and projected onto Adam Koch’s set), deliberately anachronistic costumes (by Sarah Lockwood), and colorful props worthy of a Carrot Top show (by Devin Orr). Again, your appreciation of this kind of broad humor is a matter of taste — especially when the jokes lean into racial and ethnic stereotypes. But when nothing-is-sacred meets it’s-all-in-good-fun, you might find yourself wondering if the satirical framework is sturdy to justify some of the more outrageous stabs at humor — the donning of long, black coats and Groucho Marx nose-and-glasses, for instance, or the introduction of a notorious historical WWII figure as a trans woman.
Still, there’s something appealing about using an unblemished icon like Anne Frank as a tool to poke fun at the extremism of the progressive movement, that impulse to extol diversity and inclusion even when it makes no logical or historic sense. In one rousingly comedic ensemble number, in which the Franks and Van Daans imagine their lives if the Allies manage to liberate them from Nazi rule, they shift the focus to how survival would mean “we can be allies too” to all the other oppressed peoples of the world — as if escaping the Holocaust would not be victory enough. (One even holds a sign reading, “Don’t fund war. Fund musicals!”)
Like many satires, Slam Frank is too long, its punchlines too scattershot to sustain a nearly two-hour show with no intermission. The creators also reveal some glaring blind spots. In the last 20 minutes, when the show reveals a series of twists in an attempt to ratchet up the shock value, they make the show’s only named Nazi more sympathetic than the sole character who fully embraces Judaism. That’s unsettling, and frankly icky. It’s as if Slam Frank wants credit for addressing thorny issues like Palestine and Zionism, but only in the most superficial, offhanded way before moving on to another comedic bit (or a truly cringe joke about Kristallnacht). At what point does lampooning a certain blinkered sensibility drift into perpetuating its worst elements? It’s a matter of perspective, and ultimately one of taste. Too often, Slam Frank leaves a bitter one. ★★☆☆☆
SLAM FRANK
Orpheum Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes (no intermission)
Tickets on sale through November 30 for $62 to $161