THEATRE
Written by Suzie Miller
At Merlyn Theatre, Malthouse until Sept 4 2022
Reviewer: Kate Herbert
Stars: ***
This review is published only on this blog. KH
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| Callan Colley & Caroline Craig_photo Pia Johnson |
With a central character, narrative and themes loosely based on Leo Tolstoy’s renowned novel, Anna Karenina, Suzie Miller’s play Anna K tells a disturbing tale of a TV current affairs, investigative journalist who breaks the golden rule of journalism – she becomes the story.
With echoes of the ill-fated Karenina, this Anna (Caroline Craig) is married with a child but leaves her husband when she falls in love with Lexi (Callan Colley), a young SAS officer almost 20 years her junior who she met when he was the source for her sensational news story about abuse and bullying in the army.
The play takes place in a smart hotel suite (designer, Anna Cordingley) a few days after Anna has left her husband and awaits the arrival of her 10-year-old son so she can break the news to him of his parents’ separation. Anna and Lexi are evidently locked in love’s sweet embrace, initially oblivious to the fact that their affair has been leaked to the media which leads to her being flayed and castigated on social media, pursued by the hostile media flocking outside their hotel, then ostracised and finally suspended by her TV station.
“The truth at all costs” is Anna’s catch-cry on her program but this comes back to bite her when the social media trolls begin to abuse her personally for dishonesty, double standards, cheating, abandoning her child and lying to the public. How can anyone believe anything she says or any of her journalism now?
Miller creates a cascade of catastrophes for Anna as she huddles in her hotel room, waiting for Lexi to return, contact from her producer, friends and nanny or for her silent son to answer her calls. But daddy has turned him against mummy.
Craig shifts from bright and hopeful to brittle and broken as Anna while Colley’s Lexi is uncomplicated and naïve about the media circus that awaits them but needs to look more battle-scarred. Louisa Mignone play the multiple roles of Daria the nanny, Beth the co-worker and friend and Veronica, Anna’s young journalistic mentee, although these roles are thinly drawn and might be clearer and more effective if played by three actors.
The trigger for all of this chaos in Anna’s life is her passionate affair with Lexi but the relationship is not credible; there is no chemistry between the pair who need to be in such a state of unbridled, physical passion and emotional bliss that they cannot keep their hands off each other. Craig and Colley look uncomfortable, strained and awkward together and their dialogue lacks connection with the meaning and emotion of the text.
The program credits an intimacy coach but, instead of building the passion between the characters (in a safe way), this seems to have forced them further apart. This may have been compounded by the fact that Craig appears to have a serious shoulder injury that impedes her movement on stage.
The direction (Carissa Liciardello) lacks depth and makes the play look and sound like a soap opera and some action is tucked into corners, an example being when Anna stands at stage right with her back to the audience talking into a mirror so the audience cannot see her. In the scene that supposedly echoes Karenina’s tragic end, Anna stands on a sofa and does not appear to be in any danger of falling out the window onto train tracks below.
The most affecting and revealing scene is Anna’s final monologue when she enacts a mock version of an interview between her and a TV interviewer who flays her with snide, passive-aggressive criticism. Finally, the entire point of this play is made clear.
Other parts of the script and production are less successful. Some of the key points in Anna’s story stretch the link to Karenina and are just not credible in 2022. It seems unlikely that Anna’s infidelity would trigger such an extreme reaction while it is very likely that such a high profile television personality would have faced personal online abuse before now.
From the beginning of the play, we see the words “stupid fucking slut” writ large in pink neon across the rear wall, but we need to actually hear more of the specific abuse. Anna receives a few beeping notifications, but this does not give a strong enough sense of the torrent of abuse on social media. It does not seem credible that Anna almost totally loses control and spirals into a serious, drunken, psychological breakdown in just a few days. Even more unlikely is that she could pull herself together as rapidly as she does at the end of the play.
While the narrative content of Anna K has the potential to create a compelling and suspenseful stage play, the writing, direction and performances do not do justice to the weighty and topical issues raised.
By Kate Herbert
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| Caroline Craig & Louisa Mignone - photo Pia Johnson |
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