The music is glorious. Such a range of beautiful songs. Head and shoulders above other new musicals I am hearing.

-Matthew Byam Shaw - Tony- and Olivier-winning producer of The Crown

Every once in a while a musical adaptation of a literary classic comes along so breathtaking that it makes you experience the original work as if for the first time. Chris Keup’s Anna K is such an adaptation. The musical is the product of a sensitive heart and sharp intellect that unearth Tolstoy’s deepest human truths and apply them to this moment. Minor characters like Levin’s ne’er-do-well consumptive brother Nikolai are given a spotlight they once lacked, while major characters like Vronsky, Karenin, and Anna herself are reimagined for our time. All of this happens within a rich tapestry made up of Tolstoy’s major themes: the tragedy of broken families in a spiritually adrift society, the dysfunction of a political culture driven by ego and ideological certainty, the necessity of radical hope, the mystery and healing power of love. 

Profoundly entertaining but never showy, Anna K is honest and truthful as Tolstoy believed great art should be. It poses complex moral questions without preaching answers. Above all, Anna K is a thing of beauty in a very Tolstoyan sense: beauty that doesn’t titillate the senses but expands our sympathies and illuminates the path of love. The musical opens our hearts wide and connects us intimately to the struggles and aspirations of every human being, no matter how flawed or fallen. 

"The goal of the artist," Tolstoy wrote, is to “force people to love life in all its countless, inexhaustible manifestations.” Chris Keup has done that for me with Anna K, and if you’re lucky enough to experience this magical work of art, it should do the same for you. 

- Andrew D. Kaufman, author of Give 'War and Peace' a Chance: Tolstoyan Wisdom for Troubled Times and The Gambler Wife: A True Story of Love, Risk, and the Woman Who Saved Dostoyevsky