Review: Anna Karenina

At nearly 1000 pages, the challenge of reimagining Tolstoy's Anna Karenina for the stage is a fairly significant one – but Lesley Hart has taken it on and delivered a tightly packed two-and-a-half-hour show. Her heady reimagining of the Russian masterpiece assaults the senses, with lively characterisation and updated modern-day language. This textual adjustment occasionally misses the mark, jarring with the high society setting that remains faithful to Tolstoy's writing.

It isn't helped by the sometimes pantomime-like delivery, which, paired with the fast-paced nature of the production, can be almost overwhelming in its volume.

The production more generally felt as though it was straddling two potential interpretations: traditional and true to the original, or an updated, modernised version. The set was stripped back to an almost minimalist extent, but the furniture that was used was 19th-century in approach and sometimes overly fussy. A push in one or other direction would have helped give the interpretation thepurpose it needed.

While stylistically the performance sometimes lacked the courage of its convictions, Drama students would benefit from seeing this reimagining of a classic. The potentially more challenging physical scenes are brought to life with clever choreography. Whether it's the violent horse race or the passionate love scenes, the abstract movement is effective. That said, the more intimate romantic moments between Anna Karenina and her lover Count Vronsky were slightly wooden and were missing a believable connection between the two.

Director Polina Kalinina's choice to divide the action between the main stage and a strip behind a screen at the back of the stage allow for changes of pace, intimate one-on-one moments between characters and the projection of violent weather conditions.

Compressing a work of this scale into an evening could risk losing nuance and creating one-dimensional plots and characters. This is generally avoided here, but some clarity in stylistic choices would have aided what is, at points, a confused interpretation of a classic.