Performed in Covent Garden, London, on Sat 24th November 2018

St Paul's is the 'Actor's Church', being around the corner from Shaftesbury Avenue's Theatreland and associated with the theatre almost since its construction by Inigo Jones in 1631. This was a one-night OUDS revival in London of Anna Karenina, with songs and lyrics by Maria Shepard and script adapted and translated by Suzy Cripps and James Tibbles.

Tolstoy deals with the Karenin household and a number of others in St Petersburg, but the focus here is on the Karenins and two other couples, the landowner Levin and Princess Kitty, and Stiva and Dolly Oblonsky. Anna Karenina is essentially a psycho-drama about a high-spirited wife stifled by a hidebound husband, and here we sensibly avoided getting bogged down in the question of the aristocratic woman as the chattel of her husband, while not neglecting to indicate it.

The themes of the value of the family unit versus headlong pursuit of individual fulfilment, and also exploration of the limits of personal freedom are touched on, though I did not feel that the balance of interest in our troika of couples was quite achieved. Stiva and Dolly rather disappear from view, Kitty is a little under-developed, and if the altruistic Levin is to serve as an antithetical counterweight to the inward-looking Anna and Vronsky, he needs a much more vigorous acting performance than he received here.

Maria Shepard's songs, performed by a very good band of ten under Alexandra Middlemarch's lively conducting, are a delight from start to finish. They are tuneful, storyline-appropriate and with fully worked-out harmonies. The start featured the low-key song What a Mess from the womanizing Stiva (a full-of-beans Baden Burns). This number and others were hampered by sound problems that recurred later, albeit less noticeably. The first full cast number was the catchy Station Song. Subsequent musical highlights were The Unknown, partly sung to a pizzicato violin and flute duet in harmony by Anna and Princess Kitty (Madeleine Piggott, good in both acting and singing) fluttering dainty fans, the scene beautifully lit in pink-and-white by Edward Saunders.

The Ball scene was choreographed by Ellie Cooper and Madeleine Piggott, lit in shimmering blue and pink, and directed by Jasmine White with excellent use of the acting space and adjacent pulpit. Above the altar hung a roundel Holy Family, forming a highly ironic backdrop to Tolstoy's tale. I enjoyed the coming together of Kitty and Levin in the love song Words Are Not Enough (piano from of the excellent Samantha Poh, all evening fluent and tactful), and later a fan dance, That is what is Expected from a Woman, with charming harmonies and nicely choreographed by Jasmine White.

Katya Shepard's costumes were a delight: She had Princess Kitty in glamorous sky blue, Vronsky in high-collared red coat, then later in black-and-gold as he flirted with Anna in crimson (the scarlet woman?).

As Karenin, Benedict Turvill was just superb. He soon began to lay down the rules of decorum and then, at the horse race, his impassioned shock is palpable as his worst fears are realised. The subtlety of his acting was such that the play's fulcrum of interest was vested in him and Anna rather than on the Anna/Vronsky tryst. The cold fury bursting from him when Vronsky (Joseph Winter, making a sturdy lover, easily imagined as the object of Anna's passion) appeared at the Karenin house was startling. I especially noted Eric Tong's deftness in multi-parts in Act 1, including as an eccentric doctor, and then Priya Radhakrishnan as Countess Lydia was a larger-than-life presence, grabbing her The Opera aria opportunity with tremendous relish. As for Anna herself, I thought Imogen Honey Strachan convinced a little more in her illness and angst than in her earlier passion for Vronsky, and her projection of music and lyrics was a bit variable in quality, though she was not helped by the erratic sound system.

This was a super-ambitious project by Maria Shepard and her associates, carried off with great aplomb. For her, with this under her belt, it's onwards and upwards!

Eight years after finishing his War and Peace that ranged over the steppes of Mother Russia from Austerlitz to Borodino and on into the glittering drawing rooms of Moscow, Tolstoy has narrowed his focus down to the inhabitants of the Karenin household in St Petersburg and the associated lives and stories, linked by family ties and narratives of marriage, of two other couples, Levin/Kitty and Stiva/Darya. In part, Tolstoy has turned from a geo-political macro-view to a socio-economic micro-scrutiny. That said, Anna Karenina is first and foremost a novel of psychological insight about its characters rather than a vehicle for the exploration of themes, and I think this production has wisely avoided anachronistic, revisionist commentary on, for instance, the plight of the 19th century aristocratic woman as the socio-economic chattel of her husband.

Prickly Productions' musical Anna Karenina, with cast, crew and orchestra numbering more than 50, is the progeny of a triumvirate of movers and shakers. Songwriter and lyricist Maria Shepard and her collaborators in adapting and translating the book, Suzy Cripps and James Tibbles, who also co-direct, have been gestating this project since October, and in the case of Ms Shepard since her A Level days. They have needed adroit multi-tasking in spades - the distilling of the essence of a long novel, the cramming of a cast of 17 onto a smallish playing space, the slotting of no less than 22 musical numbers into the narrative: the ambition here is huge, and how gratifying that it is matched blow-by-blow in clever execution.

The direction and choreography (the latter often the Achilles heel of Oxford student musicals) is always assured and sometimes inspired. During the song 'Levin's First Proposal' Kitty was perfectly poised at an oblique angle to a full length mirror, giving the audience multiple views of her while the lighting beamed down red and pink – just gorgeous, and the passionate duet between Kitty and Levin was the icing on the cake. A second tuneful, delicate duet for 'The Unknown' played out bathed in mauve and turquoise, and near the end of the play there was a stunning moment where the anguished Anna left a darkened stage to be caught in a fleeting, brilliant light as she disappeared.

The set-piece ball with its fast waltz managed to squeeze seven dancing couples onto stage, and I liked the tantalising 'As the Night Gets Darker', another duet, where Anna and Vronsky ever-so-nearly-but-never-quite kissed. The male dancers shone in the peasant dance, while in the anguished 'Forgiveness' in Act II, there was effective work from the cellos - the nineteen-strong orchestra sat high above the action on the gallery, the cornucopia of songs and music conducted with vim by Maria Shepard.

Of course there were minor faults here and there: the opening scene lacks a bit of pace at the moment, and two or three of the songs tended to blur into one another. In those moments where the spoken dialogue goes on with musical accompaniment, the band was a touch too loud. I would call the multi-purpose drawing-room set no more than functional (and why will student productions insist on furnishing their opulent reception rooms and boudoirs with tables that appear to have been dragged out from some college store cupboard?); and the show, coming in at nigh-on three hours inc. interval, is maybe a few minutes too long (though the late start for this opening night may account for a slight sense of longueur). But these quibbles are insignificant in the face of the long roll-call of positives.

From the universally strong cast, the assured Eoghan McNelis was a smooth, humorous and sly Stiva, and Susannah Hardwick in a beige dress decorated with wild flowers was a tender but spirited Kitty; later as an opera diva she grabbed the chance to deliver a powerful aria. Alex Buchanan as Vronsky, after slightly under-powered early scenes where he never really convinced me that here was a man head-over-heels in love, grew in stature later on and did convince me of his anguish and frustration as Anna's mood darkened unpredictably.

In a sense I thought Henry Jacobs as the cuckolded Karenin had drawn the short straw; he could easily have been an unappetising mixture of emotional weakness and Old Testament proselytizing, and dull with it. The actor, however, injected sufficient humanity and pathos into the man to set him up as a credible husband to Anna and rival to the dashing Vronsky – intelligent exploring of his character's possibilities by Mr Jacobs. I liked Caitlin Kelly's feisty Princess Tverskoy, acting with eyes and hands, and Matthew Jackson made the most of his several elderly character roles.

And Anna (played by Amelia Gabriel), upon whose success or failure in the end the show stands or falls? From her first appearance she was hardly off-stage. I hardly know what aspect of her performance to praise most: her voice was strong and tuneful, her projection of the lyrics clear, her grasp of the ecstasy and agony of Anna sure and truthful, her reaction acting natural, her stage movement fluent, her sheer stamina in this heavy role... just terrific!

The numerous first-night audience lapped up this Anna Karenina. This is a thrilling feast for both eyes and ears, a living, breathing spectacle that demands to be seen and heard.