Skip to player
Skip to main content
Search
Connect
Watch fullscreen
Like
Bookmark
Share
More
Add to Playlist
Report
Why Anna Karenina is the greatest book ever written - Chichester production
SussexWorld
Follow
4 months ago
Phillip Breen, adapter and director of Anna Karenina at Chichester Festival Theatre this summer (June 7-28), believes the novel to be the greatest ever written.
Category
😹
Fun
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
Good afternoon. My name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspaper. It's really
00:05
lovely to speak to Philip Breen, who is the adapter and the director for the great event
00:10
at Chiff's Festival Theatre this summer, Anna Karenada. And you were just saying in passing
00:15
almost that it's the greatest novel, and you quickly said other opinions available, but
00:20
the greatest novel. What makes you think it is?
00:22
Well, for me, it has all of human life in it. It's a meditation on what it is to be happy,
00:35
and what it is to live a good life. It's a meditation on bringing up children, life, love, lust,
00:43
all of our angels and devils. But what I love about it as well is that, yes, it sits,
00:51
it is blooming. Of course, there is one thing that everyone knows about Anna Karenada, which
00:56
is how she meets her end. But of course, Tolstoy never, because he is so plugged into what life
01:03
is, he never lets her sit in the gloom for very long, because he also gives equal weight
01:07
to the joy and the things that make life wonderful and worth living and the things that I experience
01:16
all the time when I, you know, meet my friends or go and spend time with my family or
01:21
walk my dog or whatever it might be, you know. So it is a novel that embraces the depth of what
01:31
it is to be happy and to be miserable and to be human, I suppose.
01:35
Absolutely. And you were saying, Justin was saying to you how he wanted to bring Epic to
01:41
Chichester. As you say, if you want Epic, you've got it with this, haven't you?
01:44
You've got it, you've got it. Yeah, I've smoked the whole packet.
01:48
Yeah, it's a great, it was, I was very excited speaking to Justin when he was going into Chichester
01:55
and his plans for the place and of course being, you know, seeing those brilliant productions
02:00
last year or the Berlin girl, Coram Boy, et cetera, et cetera, you know, it's really, yeah,
02:06
he really wants to put Epic drama centre stage and this felt kind of, you know, a good fit
02:10
for both of us, yeah.
02:13
Fantastic. Well, I'm conscious that your lunch break is up. I better let you go.
02:16
Lovely to speak to you.
02:17
I'm very much looking forward to seeing this.
02:20
Well, you know, yeah, well, hopefully we'll have something to show you.
02:24
You will indeed.
Be the first to comment
Add your comment
Recommended
11:00
|
Up next
Summer 2025 at Chichester Festival Theatre
SussexWorld
8 months ago
6:20
Adapting Tudor epic for the Chichester stage
SussexWorld
2 years ago
3:21
Epic love, epic horror on the Chichester Festival Theatre stage
SussexWorld
1 year ago
4:20
Chichester's Coram Boy - “no apology about being so vast and so epic”
SussexWorld
1 year ago
5:34
Best-ever winter bodes well for brilliant summer at Chichester Festival Theatre
SussexWorld
2 years ago
4:16
Happy memories of working for the Chichester Observer in the 1970s
SussexWorld
2 years ago
3:34
"If I'm feeling happy then it's usually because I am acting!" - Chichester
SussexWorld
11 months ago
3:44
Sophy Henn and Nick Sharratt go head to head in Chichester draw-off
SussexWorld
3 months ago
5:10
Sebastian Faulks’ epic Birdsong on the Guildford and Chichester stage
SussexWorld
1 year ago
5:56
Full circle with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry in Chichester
SussexWorld
6 months ago
3:31
Anna Karenina - Trailer (eng) miniserie Rai 2013
Filmow
10 years ago
3:51
Chichester's Harold Fry: a musical "about healing and about redemption"
SussexWorld
5 months ago
2:38
Horsham sixth-former steps into Cinderella's shoes this Christmas
SussexWorld
11 months ago
2:44
Dominic will be our prince on the Chichester Festival Theatre stage
SussexWorld
10 months ago
2:57
Olivia is back for seventh show with Chichester Festival Youth Theatre
SussexWorld
11 months ago
5:17
A look back at the 2024 Chichester Festival Theatre summer
SussexWorld
10 months ago
3:58
Celebrating Jane Austen on film - Chichester season
SussexWorld
2 months ago
4:31
New Theatre Productions head indoors for Alan Bennett classic comedy
SussexWorld
1 year ago
2:47
Dark secrets as Lucy Foley discusses latest book at Festival of Chichester
SussexWorld
4 months ago
5:03
Chichester panto fun
SussexWorld
11 months ago
3:50
Macabre fascination for more than a century - The Cat and The Canary
SussexWorld
1 year ago
5:38
Launch line-up confirmed for Chichester's newest theatre
SussexWorld
4 months ago
4:32
New Dolly Parton musical brings the greatest hits to the Chichester Festival Theatre stage
SussexWorld
11 months ago
4:07
Stepping into Fred Astaire's shoes at Chichester Festival Theatre
SussexWorld
3 months ago
5:42
Rattigan in Chichester - "one of the monumentally great parts"
SussexWorld
9 months ago
Be the first to comment