It was back in 2019 that the role of Anna Karenina was first mentioned to Natalie Dormer. Six years, many screen roles, one pandemic and two children later, Dormer is finally set to take on the titular role of Leo Tolstoy’s epic as Phillip Breen’s adaptation comes to Chichester Festival theatre. The delay has ended up working out well, says Dormer, since Tolstoy’s characters are at the “cutting edge of technology”. The new railways were transforming Russia, and that wasn’t all. “Electric light!” exclaims Dormer. “We talk about it in the play, how that’s going to revolutionise their lifestyles. That trepidation about new technology is so adaptable to today: the terror of the AI train that’s coming our way. That generation of adults in the story – they’re on the precipice of a futuristic world. I think we can identify with that.”
It’s only a few days before the first preview of the play, after five weeks of rehearsals, and Dormer is speaking from her dressing room over Zoom, a rail of costumes behind her. She had two children during those years she waited to play Anna. “It was a gift to become a mother before playing this role,” she says, pointing out that Breen’s adaptation has “really zeroed in on her guilt and grief, realising that she replaced her maternal love with amorous love – and that, ultimately, was her undoing”.
