Review by Simon Jenner, June 13th 2025
“All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” declares the miserably cheated-on Dolly to feckless Stiva, followed by the scream of a train. Which scream returns at nightmare intervals. So Phillip Breen’s heroic assault (or adaptation) on Tolstoy’s 1877 Anna Karenina opens at Chichester Festival Theatre directed by Breen till June 28th.
DAvid Oakes as Levin. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner
That opening is superb. Then you realise Naomi Sheldon’s spitting, devastated Dolly, and Jonnie Broadbent’s Stiva (brother of Anna), whining, pleading and singing beautifully later on are stars of the show. If this isn’t Anna Karenina without Anna, that’s because Natalie Dormer in the title role battles heroically with being rolled up in a canvas like War and Peace.
Which Breen might adapt more consummately than his wide-canvas panoramic epic of this Tolstoy work. And it’s already enjoyed an epic sweep – in Japanese, premiering in February 2023. With music by Paddy Cunneen and pianist and accordionist Kotaro Hara returning with one of the Japanese musicians who premiered it (all three are still Japanese), you realise this adaptation has a history and reach we’re not familiar with. Anna’s story is subsumed under the brilliance of Tolstoy’s world. Her vivid thread mingles with his yarn, so to speak.
The 159-page adaptation running for three hours five minutes (cut from three-hours-thirty at the start of the run) has to be delivered at break-neck speed in the first half to get through it, with Ayse Tashkiran’s movement delivering a ballet on speed. It does though slow considerably in the second half to welcome eddies and bleak silence. Though unusually Acts Four and Five are the same length (73 pages) as the first three. It needs pruning, and with Breen helming as well as writing, he has no director or dramaturg to bounce off.
But for Dormer’s smouldering semaphores, we’d lose sight of Anna’s arc scorched across her world. Anna’s rescuing of her brother’s marriage; her passion for her son, jealousies from Kitty over Anna’s eventual lover Vronsky, who had pursued Kitty. Dormer studs this with small epiphanies to light up Anna’s plight, and we see her through flashes of lightning (there was a small storm outside). Dormer telegraphs Anna’s relationship with husband Karenin, her sexual exaltation with Vronsky. “This body wants you” is counterpoised with both Dolly and Kitty similarly obsessed with bodies and desire, even ”sex” as Kitty invites. Then friction, ostracization from society and separation from her son. Finally the gradual falling-away of love as Anna cannot secure a divorce for Vronsky to legitimise their daughter, though she declares there’ll be no more.
Seamus Dillane’s suave Vronsky swerves slowly from Kitty to possess, then grow tired with the full Anna; and longing to return to society from his stint as a painter in Rome. He’s palpably caddish, callous even; not passionate though. Chemistry is ultimately squeezed out with the pelt of scenes. Nevertheless their explosive final encounter is riveting, just like one with married Levin and Kitty. But the latter couple, in their only fight, seem, if abruptly sparring, given more room to breathe.
Karenin, a nobly restrained Tomiwa Edun, is pained to bursting point. You can see the release of forgiveness, and yet Karenin refuses to divorce; no-one leaves their spouse “not really” is echoed throughout.
David Oakes’ slow-burn Levin, closest character to Tolstoy, transmits sincerity and doubt with affect and truth. The second proposal to Kitty is achingly-charged (perhaps one semaphore too many, but delicious in a chalk and slate). With Shalisha James-Davis blasting away the sweet domestic Kitty veneer, we have a Kitty passionate, abject, sexually frank, frustrated and wild; and blissful. There’s a spark here that enflames Oakes and James-Davis. As with everything else, it doesn’t quite have time to breathe, but it’s enough.
Sheldon’s Dolly does though have an extraordinary scene with Petka (multi-roling Les Dennis, every inch the philosophical Tolstoyan peasant, wily and self-serving too), where she’s required to F repeatedly. That in itself jars, in front of a servant, and Breen knows better. But the scene rounds out her tragedy, just as Broadbent’s Stiva reveals himself fully to Oakes’ Levin, chasing Bolshoi ballerinas. And there’s his song. These are exquisite performances.
Jonnie Broadbent as Stiva. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner
There’s fine work too from Levin’s wracked elder bother, a ferocious character from Dostoevsky in Ivan Ivashkin’s viscerally authentic-accented performance contrasted with British RP elsewhere, and the go-to Scottish inflection so often deployed for Russian regional accents. Florence Dobson’s Marya matches him in a portrait of bitter acceptance touching nobility. Countess Lydia, friend then enforcer of ostracization seems to engulf Karenin and his son in Sandy Foster’s glinting delivery.
John Ramm’s Prince Shcherbatsky is a delight as Kitty’s avuncular father, pronouncing saws and self-pity from a cheerful chair he predicts he’ll be confined to. His wife, socially-overbearing Princess Shcherbatskya who initially thwarts Kitty is a cats’ cradle of anxieties. And Donna Berlin’s Countess Vronskaya clucks with anxiety over her son, oblivious to his actions. Her final preening of him in uniform is like the waters closing over Anna’s memory.
Anne Lacey as older servant Agafya and Riad Richie’s Titus provide chiaroscuro sketches of servants, signalling anxiety and care, or complaint. And the children especially Jacob Isaacs (alternating with Layla Owens) as Anna’s son Seryozha, and four others taking two roles (noted below), are unnervingly poised amidst the bustle.
Ruth Hall’s period costumes dazzle. She like many of the team have long worked with Breen and it shows. Admittedly Max Jones’ set studded with doll’s houses and blue-backed period chairs, to an incessant soundtrack of Cunneen’s dazzling score (including all effects), can clutter some scenes. Chairs have rarely seemed so musical; and here childhood toys are set to snag adults and adultery. Nevertheless it gleams with society.
With Dyfan Jones’ wide-spectrum sound envelope, just for a while this seems almost Anna Karenina the Musical (Instrumental Remix), and the overlay insistent to the point of drowning any eddies of feeling not already sucked out. Anna Watson’s lighting enjoys wondrous intimacy on occasion, and the electric light moment is a coup, though slightly obscures Kitty’s beautifully-lit giving-birth scene when (as with several tableaux) the upstage opens up. At one point ‘Death’ is projected. It’s Tolstoy’s only titled chapter, but too much of a wink to those who’ve read it.
Photo Credit: Marc Brenner
Ensemble. Photo Credit: Marc Brenner
Breen introduces fourth-wall moments only married couples can deploy apparently. Knowing 18th-century winks to the audience though betrays a fear of flagging interest, the need for laughs. He might trust Tolstoy more. Helen Edmundson’s far shorter 1992 adaptation is more affecting. There, Anna and Levin tell the story and their one meeting (here just exchanged as “different trains”) is thus charged with sympathy. Scenes are deftly synchronous. Breen’s production similarly claims these should be realised as in a dream.
Tellingly, Slavoj Žižek’s quote about fantasy being nightmare head the text. It’s a chip of brilliance from that bearhug of a Croatian Marxist philosopher; but one who magnificently never knows how to stop for breath. Breen though presents three hours plus that with pruning (not just timing but effects), will do so more often. Then we’ll emerge with a revelation, perhaps a classic: a fully-articulated world around Anna, and not just her ghost.
Tanya (Darcey Cooper/Rosie Cooper), Grisha (Will Metcalfe/Dylan Paige)
Musicians Director/Piano/Accordion Kotaro Kata, Violin/Viola Akiko Ishikawa, Bass Shin Kawahara. Interpreter Mayuko Kawai.
Fight Director Renny Krupinski, Wig, Hair & Make-Up Designer Susanna Peretz, Casting Director Helena Palmer CDG
Voice and Dialect Coach Ben Fury, Assistant Director Becca Chadder, Production Manager Kate West, Costume Supervisor Josie Thomas, Props Supervisor Kate Margretts
CSM Janet Gaufrey, DSM Klare Roger, ASMs Charlie Henley-Castleden, Elle Roberts, Head Chaperone Janette McAlpine, Chaperone Jenny Beadle, Emily McAlpine, Lesley McGovern, Alison Nichols, Becky Stuckey.