‘Anna Karénina’, about happy families

Just like happy families, all adaptations of ‘Ana Karenina‘they would look alike… if we only remembered adultery; What distinguishes them is how the unhappiness of their protagonists is told. From the classics, such as Tolstoy’s monumental novel, we know the outcome. What is important is the focus of the story, the narrative planes that each adaptation underlines. In three hours, Carme Portaceli brings together eight characters chained by unhappiness: the dissatisfied Ana and her husband Alexei; Stiva, Ana’s brother and Dolly’s unfaithful husband, overwhelmed by economic dependence and children; Vronsky, Ana’s lover, who renounces his military career; and the couple that makes up the insecure Levin and Kitty, Dolly’s sister.

To follow the itinerary of that family network in which everyone is unhappy in their own way, the scenery for trips to nowhere in Alessandro Arcangeli and Paco Azorín: a circular railway track through which each character travels according to their circumstance. Ariadna Gil accurately embodies that Ana Karénina in permanent restlessness and Jordi Collet It is the husband who must face abandonment. Eduard Farelo He gracefully composes the character of that Stivia who goes from flower to flower to avoid a family home that he can no longer support. Miriam Moukhies gives off the youthful freshness of that Kitty, scorned by Vronsky when he falls in love with Karenina. An unconvincing Vronsky in charge of Borja Espinosa. Nor is the inclusion of a narrator who provides comments (in English) to the events of the work convincing. Like Jiminy Cricket, he describes to the audience, as if they were not able to understand him, the emotions that each character experiences.

Emotionally surrounded by music, minimalist and melancholic of Jordi Collet and the videographic images of Joan Rodonthis ‘Ana Karénina’ walks towards the last station to which her defeat in life leads; that search, at onerous cost, for a happiness that he did not achieve, but for which he fought.

It is worth returning to that story, this time with Portaceli. A well-represented Tolstoy who will travel in 2025 to Zagreb, Paris, Porto, Brussels, Amsterdam, Cluj and Miskolc.