The most incendiary musical comedy of 2025 will advance to the off-Broadway Orpheum Theatre in October, and its creators are marking the show’s return with, not surprisingly, two provocative events.
The box office for Slam Frank, which reimagines Anne Frank’s story through an “intersectional, multiethnic, genderqueer, Afro-Latin hip-hop lens,” according to the producers, opens on June 12, the birthday of the Jewish teen whose diary of her family’s life hiding from the Nazis became a classic of Holocaust literature.
The following week, on June 19 — Juneteenth — the show’s producers will host what they are calling “Off-Broadway’s First Annual Official Belated Pro-Diversity, Pre-Julyteenth, Cismasc-Affirming, Anti-Capitalist, LatinX, Anne Frank Fiesta de Quinceañera” at the Orpheum on Second Avenue in Manhattan’s East Village.
Theatergoers who attend the event, which begins at 5 p.m., will have the opportunity to purchase select seats for $36 and remaining seats — which go for $50-$140, at a $36 discount. (A rep for the show explains that 36 is a factor of 18, which in Hebrew numerology symbolizes life.) Special guests and performances are also promised.
Directed by Sam LaFrage, previews of Slam Frank will begin on Sept. 17, the one-year anniversary of the show’s developmental run at The Asylum in Midtown. The musical officially opens Oct. 24 and will continue through Nov. 20.
Slam Frank was inspired by an actual, viral 2022 Twitter thread that asked if Anne Frank ever acknowledged her “white privilege,” and imagines what happens when a progressive community theater company transforms Frank’s story into a hyper-woke parable. Co-created by Joel Sinensky and Andrew Fox, who composed the music, which, he has said, was influenced by a wide range of artists, including Kanye West, Stephen Sondheim, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jason Robert Brown and Wilson Phillips. Fox also has said the play’s politics are intentionally elusive, but its main target is identity-politics excesses.
Jaz Zepatos as Mrs. Van Daan, Olivia Bernabe as Anita and Austen Horne as Edith in ‘Slam Frank.’
Jasper Lewis
Fox also spearheads the play’s often inflammatory Instagram account, which now boasts 98,000 followers and helped generate sold-out crowds at The Asylum without benefit of a marketing budget.
Critics called Slam Frank one of the boldest theatrical experiences of 2025. Former New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley praised the musical on social media as “the most important show around,” and the Times named it the “Funniest Spoof of the Left” in its Best Comedy of 2025 recap. And Zachary Stewart of TheaterMania wrote, “If you love the theater and want it to once again be a safe space for dangerous thought, the best thing you can do is buy a ticket to Slam Frank and laugh your ass off.”
Leave a Reply