“Slam Frank,” a problematic musical that revels in its provocations, winds up a muddle and maybe something worse. But it begins with a premise that at least is clear: What if a hopelessly woke theater company dramatized the story of Anne Frank – transforming it  (according to the show’s website) into “an intersectional, multi-ethnic, genderqueer, decolonized, anti-capitalist, hyper-empowering Afro-Latin hip-hop musical.”

One might wonder right from the get-go:  Is anybody so hopelessly woke anymore? Even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks dismissively of “Woke 1.0.”  Still, I was amused by the opening land acknowledgement by the self-proclaimed “artistic director of a highly-respected and forward-thinking regional theater company”  (portrayed with comically fatuous self-regard by John Anker Bow):  He couldn’t remember the name of the indigenous people he was supposed to be acknowledging, so said “Okay, well, whoever they are, they were here first, and we are here now, and shame on us.”

Book writer Joel Sinensky has a knack for such zingers, and songwriter Andrew Fox has put together a clever pastiche score of raps and Broadway ballads, with some intricate lyrics, delivered with panache by a game and talented cast.  But while barreling forward through nearly two hours of song-and-dance-and-derision without let-up (or intermission),  the show feels less and less entertaining, and the point of it all seems more and more uncertain. Are Fox and Sinensky’s broadsides meant to be transgressive just for the fun of it, to shock us into laughter (a la South Park?) Are they most interested in satirizing a particular kind of theater complete with in-jokes for the theater folks (a Forbidden Broadway with a political edge?) Or are they more directly criticizing current social movements — and both ridiculing and rebuking an entire people; which is to say, Jews?

In the name of diversity and inclusion, most of the characters in the play-within-the-play have a hidden core identity distinct from Anne Frank’s  actual family and the other Jews who hid from the Nazis along with them in an attic in Amsterdam.  This includes Anne herself (Olivia Bernábe), who is really Anita, LatinX from “the barrio of Frankfurt, “ but her parents tell her she must hide her true ethnicity if she ever wants to get her diary published.  Her mother Edith (Austen Home) is herself a Black woman,  and Otto (Rocky Paterna) is neurodivergent with ADD, as he keeps on telling everybody. We soon learn he is also gay, when he comes out of the closet, as do the other characters, revealing various other identities. Peter (Alex Lewis), the son of the Van Daan family, comes out as non-binary, which delights Anne, who is attracted to Peter, which she says makes her pansexual (she hated the idea that she was straight.) “We may be living through a mass murder event, but that ain’t no reason you can’t be yourself,” according to Abuela (Amelia Louise Barr), who seems to be a character exported from “Hamilton.” At one point, they take off their Star of David patches, and put on rainbow patches.

Most of this is more silly than sharp.  Mr. Van Daan (Bow again) is the sole cis gender white man, and the villain, sexist and domineering: “Masculinity is under ATTACK in this attic! These women won’t rest until they turn every last one of us into manlets and soyboys.”

What exactly is being satirized here? Is it the way a woke theater company would exaggerate the villainy of heterosexual men? Or are heterosexual men being  satirized  for being sexist?  

Shortly afterward, Mrs. Van Daan (Jaz Zepatos) rebels against her husband after Edith gives her a book: “Men Bad, Women Good” (subtitle: “Re-Signifying Agency in Post-Patriarchal Assemblages”)

But then the women sing:

“We have brains,
We have holes.
Women are miracles.”

Near the end of this particular song, “Herstory,”  Mrs. Van Daan proclaims: “If we had Eva Braun instead of Hitler, there would be no genocide.”

Again, what is being satirized? Is it the way certain musicals (like Suffs) treat all women as heroes. Or is the show directly satirizing feminism and feminists as self-serious and self-centered?

I bring up these examples because the ambiguity in  “Slam Frank” is not limited to its treatment of Jews. But that’s where it finds its fullest and most crass expression 

Near the end of “Slam Frank,” a quartet of stereotypical Jews with prosthetic hooked noses and the black coats of the Orthodox, singing about their impending conquest of Palestine.

We’ll build a Zionist entity.
The Torah says it was meant to be.
Just think of all of the rent that we’ll be able to collect
If the locals obey.
Our wealth and cash will be totally
Big and brash and influential globally.
That’s what we’ve planned,
And nobody can stand in our way!

The hooked noses. Collecting rent. Global influence. This is classically, shockingly, antisemitic. The question is: Why? Are Fox and Sinensky trying to say that “progressive” theater companies are antisemitic? 

This interpretation is undercut shortly afterward, in “Anne’s Decision,” when Anne sings a sincere ballad in support of Palestinians.

This is “Slam Frank” at its most problematic. It’s hard to argue (as some have) that Fox and Sinensky are merely lampooning the performative virtue signaling of progressive theater artists, when ‘Slam Frank” itself seems suddenly to have become a master class in virtue signaling. 

Slam Frank
Orpheum Theater through November 30
Running Time: 110 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $62 – $161
Music and Lyrics by Andrew Fox 
Book by ​ Joel Sinensky
Directed by Sam LaFrage
Music director Alex Harrington, choreographer Esosa Oviasu,set design by Adam Koch, prop design by Devin Orr, costume design by Sara Lockwood, lighting design by Jamie Roderick, sound design by Gage Baker, video design by Zack Lobel

Cast: Olivia Bernábe as Anita, Amelia Louise Barr as Margot/Abuela, John Anker Bow as artistic director/Mr. Van Daan, Austen Horne as Edith, Alex Lewis as Peter, ​ Rocky Paterra as Otto, Jaz Zepatos as Mrs. Van Daan, Walker Stovall as The ASM