by Chris Peterson
If you were hoping Slam Frank would disappear before the end of the year, you’re going to have to wait a little longer.
Andrew Fox and Joel Sinensky’s controversial musical has extended its Off-Broadway run at the Orpheum Theatre through January 4, 2027. The production began previews September 17 and officially opened October 4. Now, it’s sticking around through the holidays and into the new year.
That should make for some interesting family outings.
For anyone who has managed to miss the conversation about easily the most talked-about off-Broadway show running right now, Slam Frank imagines a progressive theater company deciding to turn Anne Frank’s story into an intersectional, multi-ethnic, genderqueer, decolonized, anti-capitalist, Afro-Latin hip-hop musical.
The reactions to the musical have been all over the place.
Former New York Times chief theater critic Ben Brantley called it “the smartest, gutsiest new musical in years.” The AV Club’s Drew Gillis praised its “satire sharp enough to draw blood.” Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Michael R. Jackson declared, “There is no cast in these United States with more nerve!”
Lara Trump, meanwhile, called the show “blasphemous” and “distasteful,” according to the announcement.
I suspect the producers were perfectly happy to include that last assessment alongside the others.
Our own Jacklyn Collier saw the show and wrote, “Slam Frank is a show I'll be thinking about for a long time. But instead of leaving with the fun, irreverent buzz of those first two-thirds, I walked out wildly uncomfortable.”
There’s something appealing to me about a production that leaves people with an actual argument to have on the way home. That doesn’t automatically make it good theatre, but I’d much rather see people engage with what a production is doing than not.
Slam Frank is giving them another couple of months to do exactly that.
For more on the show, watch our own Jacklyn Collier’s interview with Slam Frank co-writer Andrew Fox in the video below.