A New Anna K At Round House

Anna K isn't the first ambitious attempt to adapt Tolstoy's epic novel to the stage. It's also not in the running to be the definitive version.

This developmental workshop production, undertaken by theHegira theatrical group and performed at Round House, sets the work in 1920s Paris, and makes pivotal characters, including the titular one, African-American. Enhancing racial themes in the work certainly adds a new dimension, but is overshadowed by an attempt to put a glamorous, Gatsby-like veil on the action. Both touches seem to push the work's more enduring, poignant and ultimately tragic thesis into the background.

The play, a story of a woman trapped in a constricting marriage but still unsatisfied with her attempts to flee it, feels mechanical and clumsy, scene after scene proceeding as dutifully enfolding narration with awkward musical interruption. Part of the trouble here is uneven acting. Adrienne Nelson is a welcome diversion when her wearied but wry Erica, Anna's best friend, comes on the scene, Danny Gavian provides true conscious as the conflicted lover of Anna, Vronsky, and Theodore Snead is such a warm, steady presence as Levin, he makes his character's less consequential side plot a needed diversion. But the rest of the cast fares less successfully—Theo Hadjmichael's Stiva, for example, is too affected in his smarmy delivery, and Erica Chamblee needs to go deeper to summon up an Anna who intrigues us (there's also the issue of casting a weak vocalist in the role of a retired singing sensation).