A Man Obsessed by Anne Frank

A new play by Rinne Groff about a man’s obsession with the diary of Anne Frank will star Mandy Patinkin and have its premiere at the Yale Repertory Theater next year. On Wednesday the theater said the play, “Compulsion,” would star Mr. Patinkin, above, as a character based on Meyer Levin, the journalist and screenwriter who helped publicize the existence of the diary and came to believe that the opportunity to adapt it for the stage had been stolen from him. “Everything Anne Frank represents was extremely powerful to him,” Mr. Patinkin said in a telephone interview, “and what he felt was manipulated in various places by various sources concerned him greatly. He went on this quest to try to purify what he felt her journey was all about.” The play is to be directed by Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater. It will begin preview performances on Jan. 29, with an official opening set for Feb. 4.