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Dateline: 2nd March, 2005
Anna Karenina in Edinburgh Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum is to present its second successive world premiere from 18th March to 16th April: John Clifford's new adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. Amid the chaos of industrialising, urbanising Russia in the late nineteenth century and the vacuous 'celebrity' society which inhabits it, Anna embarks on an affair, a refuge from her loveless marriage. But this is an era in which a woman's passions are circumscribed, choked and controlled, leaving no option but the most extreme. Tolstoy is one of the world's great novelists, and Anna Karenina is one of his greatest works. Clifford has sculpted the Russian's story into a punchy script, emphasising the characters, complex relationships and sexual hypocrisy of the novel and condensing them into a rich and intense drama that speaks to our own time as powerfully as Tolstoy's novel spoke to his own. Director Muriel Romanes' approach mirrors this with a production which avoids overblown period costumes and sets, stripping them back to allow space for the actors and action to breathe. Francis O'Connor, whose work was seen previously this season on Mark Thomson's production of Othello, has created a rustic tree-bound, door-lined space evoking the emotional claustrophobia and atavism of the play and also Tolstoy's pastoral setting for his novel. Romanes, whose previous directorial hits include 2002's Lyceum production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Michel Tremblay's If Only... the following year, has assembled a versatile ensemble cast: Anna is played by Raquel Cassidy, Vronsky by Jamie Lee and Levin by Liam Brennan. They are joined by Louise Collins, Cara Kelly, Vari Sylvester, Paul Blair, Kevin McMonagle and Kirsty Mackay. Clifford's previous work includes his translation of Celestina for Birmingham Rep, one of the hits of the 2004 Edinburgh International Festival, and his 1998 translation of Calderon de la Barca's Life is a Dream, again for the EIF and produced by the Royal Lyceum. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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