Anna has just left her husband to be with Lexi, a man she has fallen head-over-heels in love with. Anna is a journalist for a nightly TV news program and she met Lexi when she interviewed him about being a whistle-blower in the Armed Services.
I bet you’ve
already got a thought in your mind. You’re already starting to think about Anna’s
choices here. Starting to question the murkiness of the decisions she’s making.
Does it help to know she says the new relationship started long after the story
aired? Does it complicate things even further when you know she has a child at
home? What do you think about Anna K now?
When the
story of her marriage break-up leaks online, commentary starts to undermine her
career as a journalist, who is always trumpeting “truth at all costs”.
#TheAnnaKAffair trends on social media and while her bosses question the ethics
of her starting a relationship with the subject of one of her pieces, online
trolls hurl misogynistic abuse at her.
You’re not
one of them, though. You’re not going to throw all kinds of invective her way behind
the anonymity of your keyboard. But do you think maybe her decision was rash? Are
you wondering if maybe she’s being driven by lust rather than love? Are you
still thinking about how much she has upset her son, who has read about these
stories online?
It’s a story
that has become all too familiar in recent years. Abuse. Misogyny. Women being
torn down in a way men never are. Facing consequences that men never face.
Suzie
Miller’s new play, Anna K, is about the problems of being a female public
figure under scrutiny and its inspiration comes, apart from our world around
us, from Leo Tolstoy’s 1878 novel, “Anna Karenina”.
The play is
2022’s answer to a novel that puts Anna in a similar situation – leaving her
husband and child(ren) to be with her love, and being punished by society for
her choices. Look how far we haven’t come, Miller’s play is saying. Look
at what women are still judged for.
If you walk
into the Malthouse theatre knowing the inspiration, you’ll see further
connections to Tolstoy’s book, including character names, Anna’s general arc
(to a point) and the recurring motif of a train – which rolls past Anna K and
Lexi’s hotel room “love nest” throughout the play. It’s a fun game of join-the-dots,
if that’s what you’re into.
The character
name, Anna K, though, suggests to me an allusion the character of Josef K, from
Franz Kafka’s novel, “The Trial”. It was evocative of that character’s loss of
control over his destiny. And it nodded to Anna K’s trial by social media. But
the play is more straight forward than that – Anna knows what “crimes” she’s
been accused of and she has some of the tools to fight back.
Stripping
away the literary allusions, we’re left with a play that lacks subtext. It’s
about what it’s about. But public figures being tormented by trolls and society
questioning women’s choice is a vital subject to wrestle with always – online,
on film, on television and on stage.
We’re in an
expensive hotel room designed by Anna Cordingly. Behind the sheer curtains,
floating somewhere out in the dark, in pink neon letters, are the words STUPID
FUCKING SLUT. It’s a striking image. It haunts Anna throughout, seemingly one
of the hundreds of abusive tweets and DMs sent her way over the week she’s holed
up, unable to see her child or go to work. She’s trapped and we’re trapped with
her.
The sound design
by Joe Paradise Lui and lighting design by Paul Jackson are unnerving, keeping
us within Anna’s increasingly panicked mind. The sound of the regular passenger
trains is both comforting and worrying. The lights are soft and comforting but
could go out at any moment.
Caroline
Craig gives a solid performance as Anna, a woman whose edges slowly start to
fray as the situation becomes more fraught. She has three women visit over the
course of the week she’s in the hotel (all played with sparkling variety by
Louisa Mignone) who are helpful and hurtful to varying degrees. But Anna is
determined that she’s right and society has it out for women. The answer might
not be to return to her husband, but is the answer to dig in without looking
inward?
The play
gives us a flawed central figure without really interrogating her. If she has
done the wrong thing sleeping with an interview subject, the text tightens
those screws by suggesting she may have coached him before they went to air, skipping
past the possibility that the simple facts are murky enough. We have a woman who
is being treated terribly, which she has every right to rail against, but the villain
is a faceless mob without nuance.
Anna K also wants us to believe that Anna
would risk her family and career to stay with Lexi, a character who is thinly
drawn – not helped by Callan Colley’s patchy performance as the SAS soldier,
who might have lied to Anna all along.
Anna K wants us to believe it is
barrelling towards the same ending as “Anna Karenina”.
*
In Soviet
Russia, in the early 20th Century, the Department for Agitation and Propaganda
– a part of the Communist Party – was responsible for getting explicitly political
messages in favour of the party out to the people through literature,
pamphlets, plays and films.
This concept
gave rise to agitprop theatre, highly-politcised works that
spread through Europe and later, the United States. It focused on agitation and
propaganda, though not necessarily with the baggage of communism or the suggestion
that all propaganda is bad. Here it means plays that wear their political hearts
on their sleeve - telling you what the writers, directors and theatre-makers
want you to know.
Miller’s
new play, directed with a clear sense of purpose by Carissa Licciardello, is a
kind of agitprop. They are telling you what you need to know. Women are more
likely to receive death threats online, even for just doing their jobs. Women’s
personal lives are a source of media fodder and clickbait more than male
professionals, who seem to get by unscathed after their indiscretions.
The play is
about what it’s about. It’s not subtle and it’s not particularly layered. And
we hear these stories day in and day out. Nothing in this play is new, if you’ve
been paying attention. And it’s really old, whether you’ve read the Tolstoy
novel or not.
Late in the
show, Caroline Craig plays a striking scene – Anna interviewing herself as she
feels everything slipping through her fingers. She’s not sure who her friends
are any more. She’s not sure if she can reach out to her colleagues. She isn’t
even sure if Lexi is coming back for her. I wish the rest of the play had more
moments of energy and passion like that one.
You’re
still thinking about the bones of the story, though. I mean, I am. I’m still
thinking about the judgments I make when I hear online celebrity gossip or read
complex news items filtered through my Twitter feed. I’m still thinking about
the choices Anna made and wondering what she could have done differently, even though
I know she doesn’t deserve the vitriol she copped.
Theatre
should be challenging and thought-provoking and get under your skin. Anna K
has a lot to say about the harassment of women online but the reality of that
already makes me angry.
Nothing in
this play is new, if you’ve been paying attention.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Anna K is playing at the Malthouse until September
4th.
Photos by Pia Johnson.
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