The Shame of Slam Frank

Currently playing at Asylum NYC in New York, Slam Frank is a musical that is stirring up offense and controversy in equal measure. This is nothing new in theatre and many will argue that such debate is symptomatic of a healthy arts scene.

Inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank and penned by Jewish creatives – Joel Sinensky has written the show’s book and Andrew Fox, its music and lyrics – Sham Frank is described as an “intersectional, multiethnic, genderqueer, decolonized, empowering Afro-Latin hip-hop musical”. With such an eclectic description it needs to be recalled that Anne Frank was a Holocaust victim from Amsterdam who died in 1945 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Sham Frank is but the latest in a number of theatrical productions that have sought to capitalize on the box office draw of the tragic Dutch teenager.

Slam Frank was recently seen by UK-based theatre producer Estee Stimler, who attended in a private capacity. Her tickets were paid for personally and she sought no favor or connection from the show’s producers or PR team. Such was Stimler’s reaction to the piece that she penned a critique of the show in an Opinion article for Jewish News, a UK publication, that was published last week.

Stimler, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, commented that the show’s treatment of Zionists portrayed them as evil “Der Stürmer caricatures”, her OpEd ultimately concluding that with the show depicting “Zionism as an imperialist conspiracy, it did not satirize antisemitic myths about Jewish power. It reinforced them.”

I have written in the past about the useful idiocy of those who speak out “as a Jew” (in this instance, Sinensky and Fox) and who then go on to condemn Israel or Zionism as if their personal Judaic heritage in some way validates their misguided opinion. Recent events of course have shown an uglier reality, as following the recent ceasefire in Gaza and the release by Hamas of the last living hostages that they had seized on October 7th, there has been no noticeable decline in calls to “globalize the intifada” nor in demands that Palestine should be free “from the river to the sea”.

This ongoing manifestation of such hatred is a clear indication that what may be superficially described as anti-Zionism is but the thinnest of veils for a far uglier antisemitic reality, with those Jews who condemn Israel and Zionism possibly ignorantly, possibly deliberately, spouting a credo that is existentially treacherous towards their own heritage.

This article opened with an acknowledgment of the importance of debate in the arts world. It appears that the producers of Slam Frank do not afford democracy the same respect, for not only does the show appear to offend individual sensibilities in regard to the Holocaust, it also abuses the principles of free speech by seeking to stifle discussion.

In the ugliest of demands, the show’s public relations agency informed Stimler that comments by the press on the show’s final 20 minutes of the show are “embargoed”, asking her to “revise her piece” so as to preserve the “visceral experience” of the musical’s final act. The agency chose to ignore the fact that Stimler had attended in a private capacity and had sought no press accreditation whatsoever. It is disappointing but not altogether surprising that the team behind Slam Frank have sought to shut down aspects of debate. The embrace of illiberalism by so many of today’s liberals has become a familiar feature of the contemporary political landscape.

The writers of Slam Frank are evidence that all too often in today’s world, it is members of the Jewish community who can prove to be amongst our own worst enemies.