Somehow, in my post-high school haze, I managed to file “The Diary of Anne Frank” under stale academia. Did we read about it too many times? Watch the video over and over? Was the teacher less than enthusiastic? Memory fades. In any case, the thought of seeing the play produced on stage in Greene last weekend wasn’t my idea of Friday night fun.

Intrepid theater-goer that I am, I made the trek to Greene’s Chenango River Theatre dutifully (with a stop for a great dinner at Nathanael Greene’s Publick House), expecting, I suppose, a tepid reminder of my grade school past. I should know by now not to make assumptions about anything I’m about to see on CRT’s stage – I’m always surprised, in a good way.

And such was the case with “The Diary of Anne Frank.” While I had my high school Cliffsnotes version of the story committed to memory, over the years I must’ve forgotten its heart and soul. “Transcendently powerful” sounds like a movie poster critic blurb, but it nonetheless describes this production, based of course on the diary of a young Jewish girl during World War II, who is forced, along with her family and a few strangers, into hiding from the Nazis in a concealed Amsterdam attic.