WE all know what happened, but still we struggle to come to terms with why it happened and more to the point why it is still happening. The tide of genocide is yet to turn, and racism has been making not only the front pages but the back pages too.

That makes Nikolai Foster’s production of The Diary Of Anne Frank as timely as it could be, not least in a city where the YUMI organisation embraces multiculturalism but the spectre of Clifford’s Tower’s past has left York almost devoid of a Jewish presence.

Watching a play where you know the outcome applies as much to Romeo And Juliet and a Berwick Kaler pantomime as it does to The Diary Of Anne Frank, but the difference is that Anne’s story is true and we watch in troubled hindsight.

Maybe it is best to put that hindsight and foreknowledge to one side, and judge the production on its artistic and storytelling merits, which are extremely high indeed, as to be expected from Foster, a director who has gone from the plucky young American orphan’s musical tale of Annie at the West Yorkshire Playhouse to the diary of a German teenager, hidden away with her family in an Amsterdam annexe.

Foster is strong on both the visual and the verbal statement. He opens with falling rain, church bells and a mournful cello and the first of the voiceovers by Anne (coquettish and bright Amy Dawson) on July 6 1942.

Written by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett and adapted by Wendy Kesselman for this educational touring co-production by York Theatre Royal and the Touring Consortium, the diary comes to life in the depiction of two families living in secret in the annexe from 1942 to 1944 but most strikingly in the voiceovers (one of which reveals Anne’s sexual awakening – details originally held back from the published diary by Anne’s father Otto (Christopher Timothy).) Foster and his designer, Morgan Large, have made maximum use of the Theatre Royal’s proscenium arch design. Large by name, and Large by design, he opens up the stage right to the back wall, and yet still conveys the claustrophobia of so many people sharing the cramped space.

Significantly too, actors are never out of sight. When not in a scene, they sit at the side, a reminder that the Frank and Van Daan families could never leave the annexe.

On the one hand, everything is seen through the eyes and words of Anne (such as her blossoming feelings for Peter van Daan (Robert Galas), but on the other, Kesselman’s script skilfully paints fuller pictures of each character, such as the mother, Edith Frank (Kerry Peers), who so frustrates Anne.

The minutiae of life, the monotonous kale meals, unexpected new shoes for Anne, a bread thief in their midst, provide the play’s ebb and flow, but the constant threat of discovery or betrayal hangs over everything. You know the ending, but I won’t give away Foster’s brilliant directorial decision that makes the finale all the more troubling to watch.

When Timothy’s Otto reaches out with Anne’s diary and says “All that remains”, it is reminder that her words must live on, and that one day the pen really will be mightier than the sword.

The Diary Of Anne Frank, York Theatre Royal and Touring Consortium Theatre Company, York Theatre Royal, until March 3, then on tour from March 12 to May 26. York box office: 01904 623568.