It’s been 80 years since Anne Frank’s death in the Holocaust, and the intervening decades have done little to dampen the power of her story.

Born in 1929, Frank was a young Jewish girl who went into hiding with her family because of Nazi persecution during the occupation of the Netherlands. While hiding in an Amsterdam attic, Frank kept a diary of her everyday life until she and her family were arrested by the Gestapo. Frank and her sister Margot died in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, presumably from typhus.

Frank’s father Otto was the only family member to survive. Honoring Frank’s wish to be an author, Otto edited and published his daughter’s diary in 1947. It stands today as one of the most widely read books in the world.

In 1955, Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich’s play adaptation “The Diary of Anne Frank” premiered on Broadway, winning the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Though wildly successful, that version has received criticism in recent decades for sanitizing Frank’s story and downplaying her Jewishness.

A revised version by Wendy Kesselman that addresses these criticisms debuted on Broadway in 1997; it’s this version that’s currently playing at Swift Creek Mill Theatre.

Deb Clinton, the director of Swift Creek’s staging, is kind in her evaluation of the earlier version of the show.

“It was a really universal adaptation. It was more about human rights than, let us say, Jewish persecution,” says Clinton, who is Jewish. “To be fair, in 1950 the world was not ready to love Jews onstage. It would be another 10 years before ‘Fiddler’ would happen and people would be OK with seeing that onstage. It was a much more sanitized version of a really important story.”

Clinton lauds the revised version for its nuance and embrace of Frank’s identity.

“It updates the story, makes it much more relevant and much more appropriate for a contemporary audience,” she explains. “There’s a lot of Jewish identity that has been put back into the script. We’re not talking about [random] people who have been marginalized. We’re talking about people of the Jewish faith who cannot practice their religion.”

Anne Frank’s story still resonates with readers and audiences in part, Clinton says, because of her honesty and hopefulness.

“She’s a really amazing character. She’s young, but she’s insightful and she’s really funny,” Clinton says. “Humanity is always struggling with being hopeful in times of great difficulty, and she personifies and symbolizes that.”

Ayla Clinton, who plays the title role, says that this adaptation pulls material from the unabridged version of Frank’s diary that some may be unfamiliar with, including passages about Frank’s burgeoning sexuality.

“It’s been interesting for me as a queer person to learn that Anne herself had proclivities towards queerness,” they say. “It’s been interesting revisiting a lot of those feelings and experiences, but in a totally new way.”

People are drawn to Frank’s story not only for its description of living during the Holocaust, but also for its first-person account of girlhood, Ayla says.

“Growing up as a young Jewish girl, I would say that Anne Frank was probably the biggest name out there that you could identify with for Jewish girls in history,” they say.

Asked about being directed by their mother, Ayla says it’s been a great experience, and that they’ve had discussions together about their own Jewishness in relation to the play.

“It’s definitely been a bonding experience for sure,” Ayla says, adding that most of their previous collaborations have been musicals. Lately “we’ve been able to do a lot more serious work together than we have in the past, and we’ve navigated it pretty well.”

Overall, Ayla hopes audiences take away that Anne Frank’s narrative is about so much more than a young girl who died tragically.

“The story is about how to survive amidst a very tragic and horrible situation and still find hope,” Ayla says. “While there are some serious parts of the show that are extremely important to the telling of her story, there are also so many fun moments. It’s a really beautiful story that always needs to be told.”

“The Diary of Anne Frank” runs through Feb. 15 at Swift Creek Mill Theatre, 17401 Route 1, 23834. For more information, visit swiftcreekmill.com or call (804) 748-5203.