Compulsion

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Rinne Groff's Compulsion, now premiering at Yale Rep under Oskar Eustis' direction, is a problem play, and also a problematic one. Not only does it jar to see Anne Frank resurrected as a Bunraku-scale puppet, it's even more jarring to hear words put in her mouth, especially when they're intoned with the gee-whiz, all-American optimism of a starry-eyed bobby-soxer. Surely Frank's undying appeal -- beyond her tragic martyrdom -- is the fact that she was no one's puppet. As the machinery of war closed in and her life became almost unimaginably circumscribed, she continued to speak her mind.

This is the very quality that attracts and ultimately maddens the writer Sid Silver (played with engro[...]