About the Show

A theatre troupe remakes Anne Frank's story as an Afro-Latin hip-hop satire.

Inspired by a viral social media debate, Slam Frank is a satirical musical about a progressive theatre company attempting to reinvent The Diary of Anne Frank for contemporary audiences. The company transforms Anne Frank's story into an intersectional, multiethnic, genderqueer, decolonized Afro-Latin hip-hop musical, creating a play-within-a-play that examines the language, conventions, and assumptions of modern theatrical adaptation.

The musical features a book by Joel Sinensky and music and lyrics by Andrew Fox, who conceived the project after a widely discussed 2022 Twitter thread. The production is directed by Sam LaFrage. Fox's score draws on hip-hop musical traditions while the show's meta-theatrical structure places the adaptation process itself at the center of the story.

The Off-Broadway production plays at the Orpheum Theatre beginning September 17, 2026, with an opening night on October 4 and a scheduled engagement through November 30, 2026. The production follows an earlier developmental run at Asylum NYC and marks the show's largest New York presentation to date.

Critic Reviews (5)

"The play’s timeliness isn’t prescience. It’s patterns repeating."
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"The music and lyrics in Slam Frank are better than a lot of what I’ve encountered in new off-Broadway musicals. "
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"while barreling forward through nearly two hours of song-and-dance-and-derision without let-up (or intermission), the show feels less and less entertaining, and the point of it all seems more and more uncertain"
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Like many satires, ‘Slam Frank’ is too long, its punchlines too scattershot to sustain a nearly two-hour show Your response ultimately comes down to taste. Too often, ‘Slam Frank’ leaves a bitter one. ★★☆☆☆
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It aims essentially to resurrect a mid-century classic, burden it with pop culture signposts from a variety of eras, reassess its relevance in these troubled times, and find it wanting. Which it does in an anything-for-a-laugh way, to the point where your sides may be sore from being poked in the ribs so relentlessly.
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