Edmundson Helen - Leo Tolstoys Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy ANNA KARENINA adapted for the stage by Helen Edmundson NICK HERN BOOKS London www.nickhernbooks.co.uk Contents Authors Note The first time I read Anna Karenina, I became totally absorbed in Annas story. The presence of the irascible Levin was an irritant. I found myself constantly turning the pages to see how long I would have to wait before Annas next appearance. I was therefore surprised when I began talking to my director, to discover that shed had virtually the opposite response and was very caught up in Levins story his love for Kitty and his desire to find meaning in life. I read the book again. Levin began to appeal, but what really started to occupy my mind was why Tolstoy had chosen to put these two stories together? What is the relationship between Anna and Levin? We searched for answers to this question and soon began to realise that the adaptation must involve both characters.

Without Levin, Anna Karenina is a love story, extraordinary and dark, but essentially a love story. With Levin it becomes something great. Two other things confirmed our thoughts: watching the films of the novel, all of which deal solely with Anna and none of which get beyond melodrama and clich; then visiting Russia itself and finding that Russians talk about Levin and Anna with equal familiarity and affection. Levin must be part of Anna, one man told us, and Anna must be part of Levin. Helen Edmundson,
January 1992 Tolstoys Anna Karenina Count Leo (in Russian Lev or Lyovi) Tolstoy (18231910) was a robust man with a restless soul, who all his life was torn between his sensual temperament and his supersensitive conscience. His appetites constantly led him astray from the quiet country road that the ascetic in him craved to follow as passionately as the rake in him craved for the city pleasures of the flesh.

In his youth, the rake had a better chance and took it. Later, after his marriage in 1862, Tolstoy found temporary peace in family life divided between the wise management of his fortune he had rich lands in the Volga region and the writing of his best prose. It is then, in the sixties and early seventies, that he produced his immense War and Peace (1869) and his immortal Anna Karenina . Still later, beginning in the late seventies, when he was over forty, his conscience triumphed: the ethical overcame both the aesthetical and the personal and drove him to sacrifice his wifes happiness, his peaceful family life and his lofty literary career to what he considered a moral necessity: living according to the principles of rational Christian morality the simple and stern life of generalized humanity, instead of the colourful adventure of individual art. And when in 1910 he realised that by continuing to live on his country estate, in the bosom of his stormy family, he was still betraying his ideal of a simple, saintly existence, he, a man of eighty, left his home and wandered away, heading for a monastery he never reached, and died in the waiting room of a little railway station. Vladimir Nabokov
Lectures on Russian Literature Helen Edmundsons adaptation of Anna Karenina was first performed by Shared Experience Theatre at the Theatre Royal, Winchester, on 30 January 1992, with the following cast:

ANNA	Annabelle Apsio
PRINCESS BETSY/AGATHA/	Katherine Barker
GOVERNESS/RAILWAY WIDOW
DOLLY	Tilly Blackwood
KARENIN	Gregory Floy
VRONSKY/NIKOLAI	Max Gold
LEVIN	Richard Hope
STIVA/VASSILY/PETRITSKY/	Nigel Lindsay
PRIEST
KITTY/COUNTESS VRONSKY/	Pooky Quesnel
SERIOZHA

Other parts played by members of the company

Director	Nancy Meckler
Designer	Lucy Weller
Lighting Designer	Ace McCarron
Composer	Peter Salem
Choreographer	Liz Ranken

The production then toured to Cardiff, Oxford, Leeds, Leicester, Taunton, Salisbury, and finally to the Tricycle Theatre, London, where it opened on 10 March 1992 Characters LEVIN
ANNA
STIVA
KITTY
COUNTESS VRONSKY
VRONSKY
WOMAN
AGATHA
DOLLY
SERIOZHA
KARENIN
VASSILY
PRINCESS BETSY
GOVERNESS
PETRITSKY
NIKOLAI
PRIEST And servants, peasants, children ACT ONE Music.

A man, LEVIN , is standing in the shadows of the stage, watching. A bent, muffled figure enters, dragging a sack. He mutters. There is the sound of a hammer on iron. A woman, ANNA , follows the figure. She is scared, agitated, but she wants to see his face and hear his words.

She tries to get in front of him, but he moves in different directions. She dares to try and grab the scarf away from his face but she cannot. ANNA. Let me see. Let me see your face. Louder. Louder.

Louder She takes hold of the sack, clings to it, and is dragged across the stage. She is desperate. The figure goes. ANNA lies still, breathing heavily. LEVIN steps forward, cautiously. LEVIN.

Anna Karenina. ANNA ( not seeing him ). Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina. I was a shy girl with red hands. I am Anna. Anna. LEVIN. Anna. Anna.

At the sound of his voice, she rises and backs away. I am a friend of your brother, Stiva ANNA. You are Levin. You are Constantine Levin. Why are you here? LEVIN. ANNA. ANNA.

This is my story. LEVIN. It seems it is mine too. ANNA. I dont understand. LEVIN.

Neither do I. Pause. ANNA. You saw just then? LEVIN. Yes, I saw. What ? ANNA.

It has always been like that. LEVIN. But why? ANNA. I dont know. LEVIN. What does it mean? ANNA.

I dont know. LEVIN. But you must know. ANNA. Why should I know? I dont know. But ANNA. But ANNA.

Where are you now? LEVIN. I am on a train, on the way to my estate. ANNA. Where have you been? LEVIN. Moscow. ANNA. ANNA.

Why? What happened to you in Moscow? LEVIN. Nothing. ANNA. Something must have happened. LEVIN. ANNA. ANNA.

Did you see Stiva? LEVIN. Yes I saw Stiva. Hes having an affair ANNA. I know. He wrote and asked me to help him. Dolly has found out.

DOLLY enters. She is obviously pregnant. stiva runs on after her. STIVA. Dolly, for Gods sake, think of the children, its not their fault, Im the one to blame, punish me Ill do anything. DOLLY.

I always think of the children. You only think of them when you want to play with them well, Im going to take them away dont look at me like that. Do you think we can still live together after this? Do you think its possible, when my husband, the father of my children, has an affair with his childrens governess? STIVA. But Dolly what can I do? DOLLY. You are disgusting. Your tears are water.

You never loved me. I hate you. DOLLY runs off. STIVA ( running after her ). This is terrible, terrible Dolly Dolly, if you wont talk to me, talk to Anna, shell be here soon, please tell me youll talk to her Dolly LEVIN. Stiva makes me so angry.

Dolly is a dear, fine woman and yet he goes round chasing after what? Theyre not even women, theyre vermin. Doesnt he know its going to ruin his life ruin her life if he goes on like this ANNA. Hes your friend LEVIN. Yes, but he makes me angry. Hes my friend but I cant stand the way he lives his life. Its Moscow.

Thats what it is. When I think of Moscow I think of hell, I think of sin and dirt and ANNA. What happened to you in Moscow? LEVIN. Nothing. ANNA. LEVIN. LEVIN.

Nothing happened. I went there and I left. ANNA. Why? LEVIN. Because the whole place disgusts me. Thats all.