"Betsy Salkind somehow manages to be simultaneously insidious and forthright in her one-woman show titled "Anne Frank Superstar." Salkind is 11-year-old Ethel Spiliotes, who has the great misfortune of being cast as Anne Frank in a new network sitcom about the WWII hideaway and famous diarist.

In what starts off as a very polished stand-up routine, Salkind warns that the show is going to have Holocaust humor. At first, audience heads turned side to side to make sure others were laughing. They were. What Salkind doesn't say right off is that the show is going to be filled with all sorts of one-liners that, in this politically correct society, really shouldn't be funny. But funny they are.

There are many characters in the show and Salkind plays them all as she retells the story of her Hollywood break gone terribly, terribly awry. From conception to table read to script revisions, it's abundantly clear that the Anne Frank sitcom idea is a bad one. But the choices made along the way in attempt to make the show more palatable for national television are ridiculously appalling. One of the best "changes" is to drop all references to Nazis and instead use the word "squirrels."

Salkind flies through the material flawlessly, making smooth transitions from one wild character to another. During the September 8th performance, there were a couple of technical miscues that left Salkind without the light she was expecting. Her comic timing and ability to improvise allowed her to make the necessary adjustments in order to keep the show going at its energetic pace.

The final scene of "Anne Frank Superstar" is an unexpected one. It's similar to when filmmakers add an extra scene after movie credits to reward ticket buyers who sit all the way through the rolling names. In this case, however, Salkind's bonus tidbit is tucked neatly within the performance. It is a recreation of her audition for "Show Squirrels," the network sitcom that somehow did make it on the air. If you haven't seen Salkind's bit before, you may never look at the little creatures the same way again."

October 5, 2000

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