By the end of Portland Center Stage’s “Anna Karenina,” though, things look subtly different. That roofline, that unmistakeable symbol of Russian society, appears to float amid gray clouds, unmoored and uncertain.

That shift makes an apt metaphor for an era of social transformation, and for the character Anna Karenina, who begins this epochal drama ensconced in privilege only to find herself lost in despair.

Adapted by Seattle writer Kevin McKeon, this version of Leo Tolstoy’s classic story originally was scheduled to open on April 6. But Katy Selverstone, the actress cast in the title role, came down with an 11th-hour illness, forcing PCS to cancel several performances and postpone the official opening.

That meant a mad scramble to refit costumes, reprint programs, and above all re-rehearse nearly the entire show with Kelley Curran, who until Sunday still was performing in “Shakespeare’s Amazing Cymbeline” in the theater’s basement studio.

All of which makes the achievement of Wednesday’s opening more remarkable. McKeon’s adaptation tells the sprawling tale in quick, economical strokes. Miranda Hoffman’s period costumes, G.W. Mercier’s scenic design and Ann Wrightson’s gorgeously moody lighting efficiently convey context and subtext. The direction by Chris Coleman (who has been on a creative hot streak of late) deftly balances scale and intimacy, deploying a cast of 17 without the proceedings ever appearing hectic.

And then there’s Curran. Learning the lines for such a large role in less than a week is one thing; so quickly inhabiting a character with such depth and nuance and naturalness scarcely seems possible.

In a staged reading at last summer’s JAW play-development festival, the willowy Selverstone played Anna with wiry intensity, giving her the air of a hot mess beneath the blue blood elegance. Curran, by contrast, presents a softer, less fragile Anna. Which makes her appeal (to the dashing Count Vronsky and others) even more apparent, and makes her unraveling more tragic.

No doubt it helped Curran to step into a cast already rich with strong performers. Keith Jochim plays Anna’s husband as a man with the soul of an actuary, by turns comic and chilling in his pomposity. As Anna’s lover, Count Vronsky, Michael Sharon shifts smoothly from superficial to smoldering to slippery. James Farmer brings a sympathetic warmth to the role of Levin, whose search for an authentic life through social justice contrasts with Anna’s romantic road. And Portland stalwarts Gretchen Corbett and Michael Mendelson find an unexpectedly rich vein of humor in a variety of smaller roles.

These and other performances create a sense of Anna’s society, at once hidebound and increasingly in flux. “You can’t change things,” Vronsky tells her, as her diminished status begins to chafe.

And yet, things change, and sometimes leave us alone and adrift amid everything we once could count on.

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Which is why the success of Seattle writer Kevin McKeon’s adaptation of the classic at Portland Center Stage, directed by Chris Coleman and running through May 6, is no small feat. McKeon manages to condense Tolstoy’s sprawling masterpiece about a woman whose love rattles the prison of her social situation into a brisk, ensemble-based production that captures the tragedy of the original, adds a slightly anachronistic humor, and—the gargantuan length of the original be damned—does it all with intermission in under three hours. Whew!

As quick summary, Anna Karenina, considered one of the greatest novels of all time, tells the story of a married, aristocratic Russian woman who falls in love with another man, eventually abandons her husband for him, struggles with her consequent exile from high society and inability to visit her son, and ends tragically. Meanwhile, two contrasting couples serve almost as alternate endings: Anna’s brother’s wife accepts his philandering and they move past it in a mutually agreed upon ignorance of sorts, and that wife’s sister marries a painfully honest but existentially awkward man for love and the two come to respect each other.

In order to cover all the explication of the novel, McKeon uses a clever fix of ensemble narration: one character says one line and another says the next, often taken straight from the novel. Combined with Coleman’s incredibly tight blocking—they’re 89 costume changes between the 17 actors in Act One alone!—the story unfolds like clockwork.

Fascinatingly, McKeon’s method recalls another powerful ensemble performance currently running, Portland Playhouse’s Brother/Sister Plays. While Brother/Sister’s ensemble narration creates a sense of the mythological from the everyday (read our review here), Anna Karenina’s creates an overpowering sense of inevitability—Anna cannot escape the fate of her social position no matter what she does. And it has the same unfortunate side effect of somewhat distancing the play from its emotional impact. It’s not until the end, when Anna is on stage alone with no further narration, that the emotion of the story becomes truly palpable, building to crescendo with the force of a, well, steam engine.

The grand marble pillars of the set, the intricate costumes, and the evocative lighting (designed by G.W. Mercier, Miranda Hoffman, and Ann Wrightson, respectively) are utterly gorgeous. At points, the theater appears all the world like a Maxfield Parrish painting, if he’d romanticized his fellow Victorians instead of Grecian maidens. But though the costumes are period, McKeon doesn’t make the same overture with the language, which is surprisingly modern and adds a layer of humor to the tragedy that keeps the play fresh—although I think Downton Abbey has shown that you can include zingers while staying period appropriate, as opposed to taking McKeown’s at times almost Clueless route (e.g. “Fuck the privilege”).

The humor is amplified by Keith Jochim, who practically steals the show as Anna’s husband Karenin, playing him with the emotionless dryness of a bureaucrat who doubts nothing and schedules everything—even sex. Kelley Curran, who had to learn the role in less than a week after the original actress took ill, plays Anna with an inner steel that devolves to paranoid hysteria by the end. Michael Sharon plays her lover, Count Vronsky, with turns equally seductive and slimy, devoted and selfish. And R. Ward Duffy stands out from the ensemble with affable charisma as Anna’s cheating brother, Stiva.

All in all, under Coleman’s able direction, it’s an epic, entertaining journey through a classic. We can just be thankful that McKeon wasn’t paid the same way as Tolstoy: by the word.

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Director Chris Coleman and writer Kevin McKeon make of this a breezy and impressive stage spectacle of movement and costume. Distant, counterpoised scenes are staged together in the same tableau, with segues as easy as a shift of lighting. Where context is felt to be needed, the ensemble players become a Greek-style chorus and recite Tolstoy’s narration from within the scene—a practice that feels like a cross between storytime for the audience and a spooky episode of Doctor Who in which the characters’ minds have been hijacked by aliens.

Kelley Curran’s Anna is a passionate creature built of regal, theatrical imperiousness. And while this is more appropriate to the weighty reputation of Tolstoy’s novel than to the ingenuousness and unlikely youthfulness actually described in the book, it is nonetheless an effective dramatic shorthand in a play staged mostly for agility. Indeed, the first two-thirds of the play is timed mostly to the beats of comedy. Anna’s husband, Karenin (Keith Jochim), for example, is broadly made into an entertainingly punctilious buffoon rather than a creature of pride and hollow capability—which makes his later rages and contritions difficult to fathom. The production’s comedic gloss works best with Levin’s radicalized brother Nikolai (Michael Mendelson), who steals every scene he’s in with beautifully pained deadpan.

On the whole, the play’s three hours waft quite amiably by in a show of finery and fine feeling; each scene performs its function quickly and efficiently before slipping into the next on a deft emotional turn or hammered punch line. And so Levin (James Farmer) is bewildered and decent, Kitty (Kayla Lian) is naive and warm-hearted, Stiva (R. Ward Duffy) is a caddish George Clooney, etc. But in the production’s rush to create a sumptuous and friction-free experience of highly telegraphed gesture, the fundamental tragedy of Anna herself goes lost and must be forced into high-gloss, hallucinogenic spectacle.

It is, in the end, a sort of slide-show version of Karenina—a pleasant diversion that asks very little, but which contains a great many beautiful landscapes. And as the stage dims, so does the memory of it.

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The problem pre-dated but was accelerated by the Great Recession, I think, but her well-reported observations make perfect sense. As resources have shrunk, producers have chosen smaller shows and commissioned playwrights to write small-cast plays with fewer technical demands. Swan continues:

“And since smallness begets smallness, it manifests in all parts of the theater ecosystem. Actors complain they can’t find enough ensemble work. Writers whittle their cast sizes. Artistic directors privilege small-scale shows that won’t drain their coffers. Audience members are trained to like sparse material, even if it sacrifices ambition for thrift.”

So, as I sat down with my program, I counted the number of actors in Seattle playwright Kevin McKeon’s adaptation of “Anna Karenina” — 17. And of the 17, 11 were members of Actors’ Equity. I soon saw that the costumes they were wearing (designed by Miranda Hoffman) were gorgeous, and as director Chris Coleman had told us in the pre-curtain talk, the actors made 87 costume changes… in Act One alone.

The set (designed by G.W. Mercier) wasn’t “naturalistic,” because the sweep of the novel requires lots of locations and keeping things more abstract is necessary, but it was smart and looked beautiful, too, with its massive columns, moving curtains and the ability to play “train” two different ways!  It had original music and choreography (Randall Tico and Eric Skinner), and heaven knows how many lighting cues there are (well, lighting designer Ann Wrightson and stage manager Jeremy Eisen know, I suppose).

Which is all just to say that Center Stage’s “Anna Karenina” does not fit the profile of Swan’s story. It’s big and wide-ranging, an ambitious undertaking that doesn’t stint on resources as it dives into Tolstoy’s tragedy. It also weaves in the major subplot of the novel, the development of the social philosophy of Levin (a stand-in for Tolstoy himself in many ways) and his courtship of Kitty. And although it can’t possibly achieve the density of the novel (supplied by words and our imaginations), it takes a serious run at it.

But am I in the audience, shaped by a diet of “little theater” during the past decade or more, too remote from its pleasures, as Swan suggests?  Because that one rang true, at least a bit. Let’s see.

*****

A lot of drama in this production, which was developed last summer at Center Stage’s JAW new play festival, occurred offstage, when right before the original opening night, actor Katy Selverstone had to leave the role of Anna because of illness. Fortunately, the plucky Imogen from “Cymbeline” was on hand! Or really, the actor who played Imogen up until Sunday night, Kelley Curran. Curran had a short time to learn the lines and the intricate blocking of the scenes, and then inhabit the aristocratic Anna Karenina, content with her bloodless marriage until one Count Vronsky shows up at the train station to fetch his mother, who happens to be on the train with Anna.

Curran brought the sturdy practicality of Imogen with her to “Anna Karenina,” a nobility more inner than exterior, more about character than bloodlines, which works extremely well with the early scenes in “Anna Karenina.” In those scenes we are introduced to her husband Karenin (Keith Jochim), who couldn’t be more aggravatingly affected and formal, and then watch Anna negotiate a rapprochement between her brother Stiva (R. Ward Duffy) and his wife Dolly (Laura Faye Smith). Stiva’s been cheating, and Anna talks Dolly out of leaving the safety of her marriage, especially since you still have some feelings for Stiva.

A little foreshadowing there, right? “Anna Karenina” can be seen as a series of comparisons. Dolly and Anna, Anna and Stiva, Anna and Vronsky (Michael Sharon), Dolly and Karenin, Vronsky’s mare and Anna, though that last one is a symbol more than a comparison. Practicality and Romance. And maybe most pertinent, Old Anna and New Anna.

Because you know the story, right? Anna can’t walk away from her love for Vronsky. Unfortunately, she can’t walk away from her love of her son, either, who will remain with her husband unless she relents and give up Vronsky. That’s just the way Russian society works.

Watching Curran deal with the conflict is the greatest pleasure the production affords, how fragile and vulnerable she becomes as the conventional crushes her flight to happiness. And yes, I’m in agreement with Marty Hughley’s assessment of Curran’s performance: “Learning the lines for such a large role in less than a week is one thing; so quickly inhabiting a character with such depth and nuance and naturalness scarcely seems possible.”

Other pleasures include the ensemble actors in their multitude of roles (including Portland stalwarts Michael Mendelson, Gretchen Corbett, Leif Norby, Maureen Porter and Val Landrum), the comedy that sneaks in (often by way of Duffy and Jochim, Corbett and Mendelson), the general ebbing and flowing of action onstage (managed so well, among so many other things, by Coleman), Sharon’s trip with Vronsky, and the byplay between Kayla Lian as Kitty and James Farmer as Levin. The real Tolstoy gave his diaries, full of details about his previous dalliances,  to his prospective bride, just as Levin gives his to Kitty. (Show of hands: Who would even think of doing the same?)

And for me, some of the voices. I’m thinking of Curran, specifically, her clear mezzo so adaptable to the stresses of Anna, and of Porter, whose pitch may be a trifle lower and is practically golden. Sometimes I forget how important the vocal instrument can be in theater, especially more epic theater such as “Anna Karenina,” but they reminded me.

*****

Epic theater: I’m not using it as a technical term that we might associate with Brecht, though “Anna Karenina” has its share of dialectics, political implications and central moral point. Actually, I guess I’d say that this “Anna Karenina” blends the naturalism of Stanislavsky with a more presentational style, characteristic of the epic. No, I mean epic in the vernacular — big, wide-ranging, ambitious.

Which gets us back to Swan’s story about the disappearance of that sort of thing in San Francisco. I have two quick responses.

1. Both Coleman and his predecessor Elizabeth Huddle kept “big” theater alive at Portland Center stage, which is our biggest theater, after all. During her years here, I recall Huddle’s biggest shows the most vividly—”The Rivals” (with original music by PDQ Bach) and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (with its fairy kingdom lifted off the stage and played on trapezes). And Coleman has done even more of them, big musicals and large-scale adaptations (the Ken Kesey duo of “Sometimes a Great Notion” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” for example), even in the teeth of the Great Recession.

I’d venture that Big Theater is part of Coleman’s artistic director DNA, and so, no, though we’ve seen small shows on the Main Stage at Center Stage (“Red,” mentioned in Swan’s article, played recently here, too, and it’s a two-hander), I can’t imagine that he would give those shows up easily.

2. I confess that my steady diet of smaller theater has made these larger shows more difficult for me to process. I’ve tended to toss them into the same pile with touring Broadway musicals, pleasant enough maybe but remote from the bitter, close-up one-on-ones I’m used to, the plays that rip off the scabs of our relationships with each other, with the audience a matter of feet away from the de-scabbing. The same thing happens to me at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival sometimes: The machinery of a production commands my attention more than the subject at stake.

This season’s “Oklahoma!” turned me around on this, I think, by dint of its conceptual audacity (populating those American plains with African Americans) and its sheer glorious volume, those voices lifted in song. I started to realize how much more the name “Oklahoma!” conceals than, say, “Red.” “Red” is a fine play, but its challenges are of a different order of complexity, relying on the talent of the individual actors almost exclusively (though, yes, nice set!).

“Anna Karenina” demands that you adjust your vision, gaze across the entire savannah, er steppe, instead of doing the microscopic drilling of smaller, psychological dramas. And yes, it demands a different sort of acting, too, fewer details but the ones that survive have to count more. And yes, Curran is terrific at this, which is why this production works so well. But still, the pleasures in general are different ones, which seems obvious, but when you’re in your seat in the dark, well, adjusting your scales and standards is one of the last things you want to be doing, right?

*****

Little theater can be epic, too. I’m thinking of the one-man “The Iliad” adapted by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson that Center Stage did last season and Artist Repertory Theatre’s “(I Am Still) The Duchess of Malfi” this season,  which makes sense because they are based on classics, but also Portland Playhouse’s production of “The Brother Sister Plays,” though not its “Angels in America,” which should have that feeling and didn’t, despite some good acting.

I’d venture that Mike Daisey’s “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” is too, but this train ride is almost over and I don’t want to derail it.

And big theater can seem so close. In this case, the proximity of conflicting desire and madness. Anna, so wise, stable and practical, can’t negotiate her terms with herself and can’t negotiate them with her husband (who insists both on custody of their son and not granting her a divorce), she can’t go forward with Vronsky, and she can’t go back to Moscow, society being what it is, cruel and two-faced. We watch her crash into the various walls that contain her, in a few deft scenes. We know how this story ends, even if we haven’t read our Tolstoy. It’s famous.

Of course, that’s not the way the novel ends. Like Shakespeare, Tolstoy took his time gathering the loose ends of the novel. Anna was a loose end, but so were all the other characters. But McKeon has it right, I think, for the theater, for our time.

The true epic thinks about everyone, not just Achilles, not just Odysseus. It asks that we enter many bodies and minds, not just one or two. And yes, our cultural currents run in a different direction, one that needs correction, perhaps, for our own mental and social health.

So, now, I suppose I’m arguing for “Anna Karenina” as an antidote, which is a little strange, yes? But increasingly, that’s how I’m thinking about theater these days.

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