I got to see composer George Tsontakis onstage tonight – as Otto Frank, the father, in The Diary of Anne Frank. George, who’s always telling me how tired he is of composing these piano concertos and violin concertos he keeps getting commissions for, has taken up acting as a sideline. (I noticed from his bio in the program that he even studied acting in college.) Last year I missed him in Barefoot in the Park, so I made sure I got out to the Shandaken Theatrical Society Playhouse in Phoenicia, NY, to see him bring a certain benevolent gravity to his role as the wise father who’s always calming everything over among the eight Jews hiding from the Nazis in a Dutch attic. As the only family member to survive, he even had the emotional closing monologue. He acquitted himself well… though I have to say I still think he composes a little better than he acts, so I hope he won’t quit the day job.
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