Anna Karenina mixed a powerful female protagonist with desire, duty and divorce, and caused a stir in late 19th century Russia. As Dundee Rep prepares a stage version of Leo Tolstoy’s novel, Jennifer Cosgrove spoke to the designers working behind the scenes.
The Rep Ensemble is widely known for high-quality acting, but the theatre has also gained plaudits over the years for direction, set design and lighting.
One winning collaboration is that of Rep associate director Jemima Levick and freelance production designer Alex Lowde, who both picked up Critics’ Awards for Theatre in Scotland last year for their respective work on the theatre’s production of The Elephant Man.
Jemima and Alex (37) also worked together on Equus, A Doll’s House and Sleeping Beauty and their latest project is Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which was adapted for the stage by Jo Clifford.
It’s Alex’s sixth project with The Rep, and he describes the Ensemble as “absolutely unique”.
“It is amazing to go to a building that has the actors, the workshop and the costumes together and everyone knows what’s going on. You don’t often get that.”
Set against a background of changing times, where industrialisation is jarring with life on the land, Tolstoy’s meditations on a woman torn between a stable, respectable yet joyless marriage to civil servant husband Karenin (John Buick) and an illicit love affair with young soldier Alexis Vronsky (Tony McGeever) continue to have relevance today.
“It’s an epic piece and we felt the set had to echo that epic quality. The set really fills the Dundee space, which is actually vast, because you can open it right up,” Alex said. “This is a statement about the epic nature of the piece, and the epic nature of Russia.
“A lot of the action takes place in a busy, bustling cosmopolitan town and, in contrast to that, there is vast open rural countryside. This meant space needed to be very confined, but also panoramic.”
Alex and Jemima also have the arduous task of staging in a “contemporary and relevant way” the scene in which the tormented character of Anna (played by Emily Winter) throws herself in front of a train.Old handThe stage is dark and stripped back but, thanks to the use of video projection, effects can be used to suggest setting and mood. For this, Alex and Jemima have called upon the talents of young Duncan of Jordanstone graduate Lewis Den Hertog, who is not unfamiliar to The Rep.
Lewis (23) is the son of Rep Ensemble member Anne Louise Ross and Rep technical manager Nils Den Hertog. Their elder son, Finn, is also an actor. The family settled in Dundee in 1999 when the Ensemble first formed and Lewis and his brother were schooled at Harris Academy.
Alex explained, “Lewis is doing projection all the way through, but he is doing one specifically for the countryside. The set itself is very monochromatic and grey and that represents the city, but when we go to the country there is a back wall which Lewis will fill with beautiful colourful trees.”
Lewis graduated from DoJ last year with a degree in time-based art and digital film and has since contributed artwork to theatrical production Blood and Roses, which had a run in Glasgow and is to be reprised for this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.Anna Karenina runs at Dundee Rep Theatre from May 23 to June 11. Find more details at dundeerep.co.uk.Continued…
Although he wasn’t consciously fixed on working in theatre, Lewis admits it was difficult not to develop “a real taste and fascination” after regularly attending The Rep to see his mother’s plays. He went on to help out with lighting and sound at while still a student.
“When Jemima and Alex approached me about this project, I found the story of Anna Karenina seems to be a story about a lot of very unhappy people,” he explained. “It occurred to me it was written at the beginning of the modern age and there is talk in the play of railway lines spreading across Russia. Some of the characters are opposed to this, while some are for it.
“The idea that came to me for the video project was not make something too visually literal. Instead, I wanted to create something quite abstract. I have seen a lot of shows recently that contained video projection, but the problem I find is it can be too literal, instead of using the stage and the actors to tell the story.”
Lewis wants his work to compliment the acting and his challenge, therefore, has been to create images with an emotion that can accent the character’s feelings.
“I have been playing a lot with ink in water. You can achieve really beautiful shapes and effects by dropping ink into a water tank that’s backlit.
“The idea came quite early on to create something that was nebulous and floating. It’s important for me to create something that is elegant because, otherwise, it will jar and people will pay too much attention to it.”
Projection is also used to suggest a sense of place, with contrasts between the city and the country, meanwhile characters such as Anna or Constantin Levin (Kevin Lennon) have specific visual motifs.
Lewis added, “I can honestly say I have enjoyed this experience. I think that the more different areas of the arts are able to collaborate, the better, because there is a common goal however abstract that might sound.”