Airdate: Anna Karenina

Not quite The Beautiful Lie, Foxtel Arts will screen Anna Karenina –the ballet.

This is a performance by Russia’s Mariinsky Theatre with choreography by Alexei Ratmansky.

Possible spoiler alerts for ABC’s own drama given it follows the same plot!

Anna Karenina (Ulyana Lopatkina) is the tragic story of a married aristocrat/socialite and her affair with the affluent Count Vronsky (Andrei Ermakov). The story starts when she arrives in the midst of a family broken up by her brother’s unbridled womanizing – something that prefigures her own later situation, though she would experience less tolerance by others. A bachelor, Vronsky is eager to marry her if she would agree to leave her husband Alexei Karenin (Victor Baranov), a government official, but she is vulnerable to the pressures of Russian social norms, her own insecurities, and Karenin’s indecision. Although Vronsky and Anna go to Italy, where they can be together, they have trouble making friends. Back in Russia, she is shunned, becoming further isolated and anxious, while Vronsky pursues his social life. Despite Vronsky’s reassurances, she grows increasingly possessive and paranoid about his imagined infidelity, fearing loss of control. (1hr 30min)

Wednesday November 18 at 8.30pm on Foxtel Arts.