From the outbreaks of disdainful snickers during a press-night performance of Anna Karenina, you’d think the production was so misguided that when the heroine threw herself under a train, she jumped singing “Clang, Clang, Clang, Went the Trolley!”. The truth is, while Peter Kellogg/Daniel Levine’s musicalization of Leo Tolstoy’s 1877 novel ultimately falls far short of being a compelling musical work, it isn’t the preposterous pastiche the sniggers suggest.
Married to benign but ineffectual Karenin (John Cunningham), Anna (Ann Crumb) succumbs to the advances of ladies’ man Vronsky (Scott Wentworth), causing her to lose her social standing and maternal rights to little Seryozha (Erik Houston Saari). Meanwhile, landowner Levin (Gregg Edelman), shy and vulnerable, goes through emotional hell at the unperceiving whims of his heartthrob, Kitty (Melissa Errico).
Faced with shrinking 1,400 pages of small type into two-and-a-half hours (with songs), Peter Kellogg’s book succeeds competently (with the exception of ludicrously short and cinematic scenes that open the second act), though Tolstoy’s incredible psychological detail is necessarily eschewed in favor of the basic plot summarized above. Unfortunately, the show itself feels like a summary; we watch events happen, hear the characters’ tortured ballads, follow the inevitable march of events -- but we just don’t get that involved in it all. A better title might be, “Anna Karenina: The Cliff Notes Musical.”
Since, as with all near-miss musicals, the whole is less than the sum of its parts, let’s not forget to appreciate the parts. Though Ann Crumb is physically and temperamentally unsuited for Anna (the wife in Rags, staged at the AJT last year, remains her best and most fitting role), Scott Wentworth captures Vronsky’s smoothness without reducing him to a soulless lothario. Melissa Errico is a delightful Kitty, especially since she gets two of the evening’s most enjoyable numbers, “How Awful” and “How Many Men,” the latter song a shade too self-aware for Kitty’s unsophisticated thought patterns.
Gregg Edelman may wangle a Tony nomination out of his adorable Levin, although I wish the adapters had stuck closer to the book here. It’s okay for Levin to be a bumbling nerd early on, but when he returns to Kitty in act two, after undergoing major changes in his political and social consciousness, Levin should have more gravitas. I didn’t quite buy John Cunningham as Karenin (he also gets the worst songs), but Jerry Lanning is just right as Anna’s brother, with whom she shares the show’s best lyrics via their comic duet, “There’s More to Life than Love.”
The resemblance of this show to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Aspects of Love goes beyond Ann Crumb’s passable but lusterless turn in both. While Aspects was sung through and Anna conforms to a more traditional book-musical form, both have dull patches of scoring (Anna suffers worse owing to the small orchestra’s piano-heavy arrangements) and listless plots composed mainly of romantic musical chairs. Both also boast charming supporting performances, occasional high points, and the hard work of undeniably talented writers trying -- failing, yes -- but trying to stretch their abilities while crafting a hit. Anna Karenina goes clang, clang, clang, but there’s evidence here that Peter Kellogg and Daniel Levine may one day combine for a zing.
