Bryan Murray will always remember Christmas 2006. Why? Because the entire festive season for him will have been eaten alive by his palpably ferocious commitment to his role in Anna Karenina.

Then again, on a personal level Murray probably is better off having a project such as this to pour his heart and soul into. Perhaps it will take his mind off the relatively recent collapse of his Pogo Theme Park, which left him in a situation where he has no choice other than to work to pay off huge debts. Not to mention the breakdown of his marriage (Bryan is happy to be able to say he will be with his children on Christmas Day). Apart from that, he’ll be appearing in Anna Karenina up to the Friday before Christmas and will be back treading the boards on St. Stephen’s Night.
“Actually apart from this being a job for me and it being great to have any job in life, working in a production like Anna Karenina is not just a matter of financial remuneration and acting never has been,” he says. “In fact, if I have a fault – like a lot of men and some women – my work takes priority. But I really am in awe at the moment. I’m in awe of Leo Tolstoy who, of course, wrote the novel Anna Karenina, which I thought was just an epic novel with a lot of people in it! But it’s much, much, much more than that.”
Unusually for a writer, Tolstoy doesn’t judge his characters, says Murray: “He doesn’t say somebody’s good, somebody’s bad, somebody’s right, somebody’s wrong. And there is not one single character in the book who is a hero, yet they are all heroes! It is quite remarkable that this man, who lived way back in the 1850s, had this totally modern – Christian or Buddhist, whatever you want to call it – way of looking at life. He really is non-judgemental. To me that is fucking amazing and that’s what makes the book so special.”
Anna Karenina has big holes in her psyche as a human being. She does a lot of bad things but there is good in her, he says: “Her husband, Karenin, the part I’m playing, is cast as a bad guy in ways but he’s got a lot of redeeming features and he forgives her. But she spurns him again. Tolstoy does not play God – instead he stands back and lets you, the audience, and us, the actors, judge the characters. It’s a fucking brilliant book!”
See what I mean about Murray being enthusiastic? Of course, this production of Anna Karenina is far from simply a re-telling of Tolstoy’s novel, which itself tells of its leading character’s tragically obsessive love affair with the Aristocratic Constantin Levin, played here by Peter Gowen. It has been adapted for the stage by Helen Edmundson and is directed by Michael Barker-Caven with set design by Simon Higlett and lighting by Paul Pyant and has already deservedly won theatrical awards. All of which clearly adds to Murray’s excitement.
“This adaptation is absolutely magnificent,” Bryan continues. “But, basically what we are doing with Anna Karenina is taking a long sharp knife out, dissecting life and looking at ourselves. That is it, in essence. And that’s what a good production does. That’s what the best directors do and we have the best director at the moment in Barker-Caven. It is amazing and you are right, I am totally fired up by it all. How could I not be? But at this particular period in rehearsal you have gone under the water, you know what I mean? You’re trying, as best you can, to see everything through the realm of the play and its characters. That’s the way I work, anyway. And lots of other actors work that way too. Because number one, and most importantly, the piece we’re working on here warrants that kind of merciless, meticulous attention because it is such a masterful work. As I say, it’s a great novel but it’s a particularly brilliant theatrical adaptation by Helen Edmundson. And I really would stress that she is not attempting to do the book, she’s doing a theatrical version of the book which I think, in many ways, is the match of the book to me.”