Review Roundup: ANNA KARENINA at Chichester Festival Theatre

Natalie Dormer stars in Tolstoy’s romantic masterpiece Anna Karenina, in a new adaptation written and directed by Phillip Breen, running at Chichester Festival Theatre through 28 June.

This witty and sensual version – blending period dress with a contemporary tone – is a surprisingly funny, romantic and unforgettable portrait of infidelity, passion and the search for fulfilment.

Joining Natalie Dormer as Anna, and David Oakes as Levin, are: Donna Berlin as Countess Vronskaya, Jonnie Broadbent as Stiva, Les Dennis as Petka, Seamus Dillane as Vronsky, Florence Dobson as Marya, Tomiwa Edun as Karenin, Sandy Foster as Countess Lydia, Ivan Ivashkin as Nikolai, Shalisha James-Davis as Kitty, Anne Lacey as Agafya, Marcia Lecky as Princess Shcherbatskaya, John Ramm as Prince Shcherbatsky, Riad Richie as Titus, and Naomi Sheldon as Dolly. See what the critics are saying...

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Gary Naylor: BroadwayWorld: Wisely, rather like the book itself with its famous quote about happy and unhappy families, things start with a bang. Everyone looks gorgeous, Ruth Hall’s costume work is as good as any I’ve seen at this venue (or anywhere else). Jonnie Broadbent gets laughs as the waster/philanderer Stiva, his longsuffering wife, Dolly (a fantastic Naomi Sheldon, channeling Joan Rivers) fires off plenty of barbs of her own in the crossfire and the ground is laid for the marriages that will be made, the marriages that will be maintained and the marriages that will be dismantled.

Arifa Akbar, The Guardian:   Anna’s outcome is foreshadowed from the start with a barrage of theatrical devices: music that mirrors the noise and speed of a train, a child’s wooden train set at the front of the stage, and characters performing locomotive sounds, including hoots that sound like screeches of pain. They lay out the ground for Anna’s terrible end across the train tracks. Except here, there is only a vague symbolic suggestion of it. Those who know the story will see the subtlety but those encountering it for the first time may be left with an approximate idea of what has happened. You do not feel its tragedy, perhaps as a result, nor the emptiness of Karenin’s vengeance on Anna, which leaves his son bereft of maternal love. Instead, you admire the production for its sometimes brilliant ideas.

Clive Davis, The Times: A Chichester season that opened with a trip to the backward provinces in Gogol’s The Government Inspector now gives us a glimpse of high society facing the onslaught of the railways and electricity. There are some striking directorial moments early on. The ice-skating scene is deftly done; elsewhere actors sitting at the rear of the stage provide the insistent noise of cutlery. Anna Watson’s lighting is wonderfully subtle as well. But, for the most part, cleverness takes priority over clarity.

James Butler, MSN: There were some confusing staging choices too, such as projection of the word ‘death’ above a scene involving Levin’s brother Nikolai, which felt out of place with the style of the production. Overall, it was an ambitious production with a stellar central performance – but perhaps bit off a few more pages of the novel than it could chew.

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