A wartime 'Anna Karenina' at Gesher Theater - review

Gesher Theater gifted us on Wednesday with a performance of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The 1878 Russian novel explores human life as each character in it faces the opportunities and chaos of modernity. 

Stiva (Alon Friedman) cheats on his wife, Dolly (Karin Seruya) with the babysitter. To avoid divorce, his sister, Anna (Efrat Ben Tzur), comes to Saint Petersburg to convince Dolly to forgive him. Anna is married to Aleksei Karenin (Gil Frank), an older man she no longer loves.

In Saint Petersburg, Anna Karenina befriends Kitty (Neta Roth), a young woman about to enter society who is in love with a dashing officer, Vronsky (Avi Azoulay). Despite preaching marriage stability to Dolly, Anna dances with Vronsky herself, violates her marriage vows, and is consumed by a scandalous affair. A heartbroken Kitty rejects a marriage proposal by Russian nobleman Levin (Miki Leon),

Levin owns both land and the people on it but confesses to his brother Sergey (Yuval Yanai) that he feels deep shame over owning people. The czar’s 1861 emancipation decree rids him of that guilt.

Levin, Stiva, Sergey, Karenin, and Vronsky are all different in nature and make different choices, but they are all Russian aristocrats, as was Tolstoy. The play, and the novel upon which it is based, provide a timeless snapshot of 19th-century Russian society moments before the Revolution.

“I am bad,” Anna tells Karenin, “I should be killed, there are two women inside of me.” This realization, that human nature has duplicity in it, is not new. 

“I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin,” wrote Saint Paul, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out (Romans 7:14, 18).” 

Tolstoy’s suggestion is to be like Levin. 

After Kitty rejects him, Levin throws himself into farm labor. 

A director's genius for simplicity

Tolstoy championed simplicity and building a connection to the land and those who cultivate it – Russian peasants recently freed from serfdom by Tsar Alexander II. Levin, the nobleman who chose simplicity, wishes to learn from the peasants and be at peace.

Director Rimas Tuminas has a genius for abbreviating complexities into simple movements. Under his guidance, a glove, a spinning top, and even a saddle, are used by gifted actors to convey, in moments, ideas that took years to write.

When Stiva and Levin discuss a restaurant menu, Friedman offers an insight into Stiva’s character in one gesture as he bites off his own glove in anticipation of the feast. This instantly transmits his inner reality. Stiva lusts after the babysitter, he hungers for oysters and he cannot wait.

Leon, who plays Levin, uses his larger frame to build contrast between his Levin and Friedman’s Stiva. 

“In the country,” he says, “we eat quickly to fill our stomachs.”  He uses his finger to polish off a bowl of milk, thus lending his portrait of Levin a childish, naïve, aspect. If Kitty rejects him, this oafish but kind man will wait for her until she agrees to marry him.

Unlike other adaptations, like the 2007 Habima version of Anna Karenina, the Gesher Theater production shows rather than tells. 

At Habima, Anna explained to Kitty that she can snatch Levin from her whenever she wants, as she did Vronsky. The Gesher production illustrates this with the use of a spinning top. The toy represents the man. Anna takes it from Kitty, then returns it to her. Not a single word is spoken directly about Kitty and Anna’s rivalry, yet the emotions are visible. 

The outwardly exciting lives that Anna and Vronsky lead, full of horse racing and trips abroad, come at a price. Azoulay uses a saddle to indicate that Vronsky crippled a mare named Frou-Frou during a race. The mare gave him everything and he shot her to end her misery.

More hints like this follow. Stiva pistol-points a finger to his temple “Women are the axis on which all things revolve,” he says and then mimics shooting himself. A regal Anna (Ben Tzur) listens to Puccini’s Madama Butterfly by herself. Like the Japanese heroine of the opera, Anna gives all for love. And just as Madama Butterfly commits suicide – Anna Karenina throws herself in front of a moving train.

The country life that Levin and Kitty build is filled with childbearing, house chores, and bitterness. Dolly and Stiva move to the country to save their marriage. It does not work. “I need him,” Dolly says, “so I tolerate him.”

The social status that cuckolded husband Karenin holds on to by allowing the affair between Anna and Vronsky to continue in secret is a poor substitute to joy. 

“Respect,” his unfaithful wife informs him, ”was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” 

Before the performance, Gesher Theatre’s director general Lena Kreindlin greeted the audience and explained that, should rockets fall, members were advised to duck and cover.

Kreindlin shared that the cast of Anna Karenina had been invited to perform in Paris at Les Gémeaux in January 2024. The French hosts, she said, insisted that the Israeli theater troupe come despite the war.

It is important “to be good ambassadors of Israel at this time,” she said.

The French premiere of Gesher Theater’s Anna Karenina will take place at Les Gémeaux. Wed.-Sat., Jan. 17-20 (8 p.m.); Sun., Jan. 21 (5 p.m.); Wed.-Sat., Jan. 24-Jan. 27 (8 p.m.) and Sun., Jan. 28 (5 p.m.) in Hebrew with French surtitles. 35 Euros (NIS 140) per ticket at lesgemeaux.com/spectacles/anna-karenine