Anna Karenina at the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh – review

What happens when you cross a Scottish writer and a Russian-born director with one of the great classics of world literature? Some very successful theatre, as it turns out. Lesley Hart’s take on Anna Karenina was written in collaboration with Polina Kalinina, this production’s director, and it has the feel of something fresh and newly-minted. In fact, Kalinina extemporised translations of parts of the original text so as to give Hart her own unique take on the power of Tolstoy’s language, and you sense in much of Hart’s script that feeling of something created newly in the moment.

The dialogue itself feels quite earthy and, for many of the characters, very Scottish. (It will be interesting to see how well this transfers when the show moves to the Bristol Old Vic next month.) Sometimes it’s too earthy, and Hart is overfond of using swear words to spice up the action: why develop your characters when you can drop a few f-bombs instead? This becomes tiresome, and there are some anachronistic missteps, too: Anna’s “baby brain”, for example, feels very 21st century, and I cringed when Vronsky told Anna “I want to make you come.” Spare me!

These stick out, however, because the rest of the script works very well. Hart’s major innovation is to splice scenes together so as to create a sort of split-screen effect that supercharges the action and allows different scenes to unfold simultaneously. If it sounds chaotic then it rarely is. Instead, it’s energising and pacey. So is the set, which suggests settings through props and costumes rather than elaborate scenery. This allows Tolstoy’s famously long plot to unfold with speed and fleet-footed narrative edge, and Hart has done a good job of isolating the story’s essentials. Levin and Kitty’s relationship is a little underplayed as a result, and even in spite of this the second act feels rushed and a little cluttered.

It holds together, though, thanks in no small part to the performances. Lindsey Campbell is terrific as Anna, most impressively so in the second act as her world implodes. She’s also very believable in the seduction scenes of the first act, though Robert Akodoto’s Vronsky is slightly wooden. Angus Miller plays Stiva with lots of energy and a rakish sense of humour, something mirrored by Jamie Marie Leary as his foul-mouthed wife. Stephen McCole traces with humanity Karenin’s journey from the buttoned-up diplomat to wronged husband, through forgiveness and back to hostility. Ray Sesay embodies Levin’s essential goodness with believable immediacy, matched by the immature skittishness of Tallulah Grieve’s Kitty.

You can’t help but lose many of Tolstoy’s themes in an adaptation like this, and there’s very little about the Russian bond with the soil that meant so much to him. However, despite its weaknesses, this is an impressive distillation of Tolstoy’s text and a punchy piece of drama that works on its own terms.

Continues until 3 June; then at Bristol Old Vic from 7 to 24 June