Virginia Woolf famously criticised Tolstoy for the ending of Anna Karenina.
Woolf felt Tolstoy lacked empathy for Anna’s destiny.
What with social media and the pile-on women in the public eye are subjected to these days, Woolf might be surprised that women who transgress by falling in love with someone other than their husband are still the subject of vitriol.
Just ask Olivia Wilde.
Suzie Miller’s Anna K takes its inspiration from Tolstoy’s masterpiece, dragging this 19th-century protofeminist text into the 21st century.
Not much has changed in the ensuing 140 years.
The mythology of the novel urges us to believe that Anna gave up everything for love and to see Anna’s death as a noble sacrifice.
In Miller’s version, Anna Kay (Caroline Craig), too, gives up everything for a chance at love with a handsome, much younger lover (Callan Colley).
Her mistake is falling into the trap of thinking she can have it all.
Unable to see her child due to her vindictive husband, trolled relentlessly on social media, and her career in tatters, Anna spirals into a madness of regret.
Craig is exceptional as Anna.
We witness an intensity in her performance from ascendance to descendance, from desire to devastation.
In the first scene, Carissa Licciardello beautifully directs the two lovers in an almost balletic dance of passion.
This perfectly sets up the self-deception as Anna, holed up in a hotel room to avoid the paparazzi, convinces herself that she will emerge unscathed from this love affair.
While Tolstoy opts for tragedy as a resolution to a doomed love affair, Miller opts for redemption.
What remains in Miller’s play, as a kind of homage to the original, is that the double standard is alive and well.
Performance details: until September 4.
Location: Merlin Theatre, The Malthouse, 113 Sturt St., Southbank
Bookings: www.malthousetheatre.com.au

• Review by Kathryn Keeble