Slam Frank

Slam Frank follows an earnest amateur theatre company as it stages its own reimagining of Anne Frank's diary, convinced that the story needs updating for a contemporary audience. What begins as a well-meaning act of reinterpretation slides steadily, and hilariously, out of the company's control.

The show-within-a-show recasts the familiar figures of the annexe. Anne becomes Anita Franco, a pansexual Latina heroine; her fellow occupant is reimagined as a non-binary dancer. As the troupe layers modern identity politics onto a wartime hiding place, the gap widens between what the performers believe they are saying and what they are actually saying, and the comedy sharpens as it goes.

Andrew Fox wrote the music and lyrics and Joel Sinensky the book, developing an idea that started life as an online argument in 2022 over whether Anne Frank could be described as having had white privilege. The piece was first heard as a concert presentation in 2025 and reached a full staging later the same year.

The score is built on hip-hop, and the humour is deliberately abrasive. The target is never Anne Frank herself but the performers who are certain they are honouring her, and the satire cuts at self-regard rather than at the history it borrows. The work has attracted objection as well as admiration, and it does not soften the collision between sincerity and self-parody that drives it.

This is a musical for audiences who like their comedy sharp-edged and aimed close to home. It lands hardest live, where a roomful of people laughing and wincing in the same breath becomes part of the show itself.