CHALK IT UP to another instance of a fabulous title coming before the idea for a show, because the funniest thing about The Diary of Anne Frankenstein is its name. Another in a long line of attempts at reviving the anarchic spirit of Charles Ludlam and other celebrated Downtown theater artists, Anne Frankenstein only succeeds in killing and hour and a half in the most excruciating way imaginable.
Drag queen Mimi Imfurst stars as the titular character, proving once again that her ever-increasing fame in the NYC drag scene is inexplicable. Lacking any comic timing or discernible personality, she flounces and bounces heavily around the stage as the hermaphroditic failure of the first attempt by Dr. Frankenstein (Joseph Beuerlein) at creating life. Hidden in an attic, she whiles away the time with her diary (Lavinia Co-op) before Hollywood star Sylvia Beasley (Jessica Caplan) and her husband Paul Perrit (Eric Jaeger) arrive at Frankenstein’s secluded castle. As luck— and terrible writing—would have it, Paul’s body happens to be the perfect fit for the disembodied head of Adolf Hitler (Ryan Feyk) that Frankenstein has salvaged.
Cleverly lacking an intermission to prevent the mass walkouts that would certainly ensue once the audience figures out that playwright Ilya Sapiroe and director Elizabeth Elkins have no idea what they’re doing, Anne Frankenstein galumphs along with all of the panache and style of the living dead. Even side-by-side with Imfurst’s tone-deaf performance (did I mention the infrequent and unwelcome musical num bers?),
Caplan manages to outdo everyone else in being aggressively unfunny. Even the girl sitting a few seats down from me, who gasped every time a gun was pulled on stage, didn’t emit one solitary chuckle at Caplan’s over-the-top, loud, grating performance.
Only Co-op, Feyk and Jaeger have any inkling of the arch, high camp tone that the play so desperately needs. Feyk scored the evening’s biggest laughs with his quick thinking when Caplan couldn’t cover his head correctly with a sheet, which says something about Sapiroe’s jokes. At least Beuerlein and Geoffrey Borman, as Frankenstein’s nephew Fritz, aren’t actively annoying; there’s just not very much either of them—made up to resemble ghouls—can do other than deliver their lines and try not to embarrass themselves.
Though it may seem the height of insanity to even think of complaining about inaccuracies in a show this convoluted and messy, I must add that I didn’t much care for Sunset Boulevard references in a play set 1945 Germany, nor were TV or Marilyn Monroe jokes much appreciated. If Sapiroe was aiming for a spoof of Universal horror films commingled with a healthy poke at Anne Frank and her blasted diary (and if she wasn’t, I shudder at what her real intentions were), she would have done far better to watch Young Frankenstein.At least Mel Brooks’ film gives the impression that he’s actually seen what he’s spoofing.
Along with the gags that land with a thud and the teeth-grinding performances, light and sound cues were consistently dropped, and no one involved with the technical production thought to come up with a solution to Sapiroe’s numerous scene changes, leaving the audience sitting in the dark for an interminable amount of time to rearrange the set every 10 minutes. Sitting there, in the dark, we were given ample time to contemplate what brought us so low as to spend a Saturday night with this dreary bunch of theater professionals—and why none of us thought to bring the kerosene and torches that so many of the people involved in The Diary of Anne Frankenstein so richly deserve.
> The Diary of Anne Frankenstein
Through Nov. 8, 13th Street Repertory, 50 W. 13th St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-352-3101; times vary, $22.50.
anonymous
