Epic tale of family and legacy in Chichester's Anna Karenina

In it, as he says, he represents “the rejection of social aspiration.”

“We certainly benefit in this production from having as an adapter the man who wants to stage it,” David says. “The adaptation is made with a particular vision in mind, and there's a lot that flows from that. There are a lot of scenes that flow organically from one place to another. The whole thing moves around at a break-neck speed to capture the spirit of the whole novel.”

As David says: “It’s a story about family and children, and it is about the legacy that individuals send off into the world. As Tolstoy became more religious in later life he became aware that life exists to create more life and then you die – and you can sense that in this.

“I first read the book when I was 17. It was bought for me by somebody that I greatly respected and I've revisited it a couple of times in my life at different points since. I think the really interesting thing is that you take different things from it and from different characters depending on where you are in your own life.

“But it does mean that the good thing is that I didn't get offered the part of Levin having been completely focused on the part of Levin. I already knew the story. And I would like to think that that has enabled me to see him in the context of the whole story.

“I've always thought of Levin as being a little bit outside the story in a way. In some adaptations he really can be sidelined but he is important because he is the other viewpoint about the life we choose. He does not keep up to date with the balls and the ballgowns or meet the social expectations. He is an aristocrat, but he respects the serfs and the peasants. I would say that he is something of a neurotic optimist really!”

And in the piece, the character straddles the various worlds: “He represents the travelling – especially with the recent invention of the railway which is obviously integral to the #spoiler dramatic outcome!"

Inevitably, this is a production which requires scale – and gets it: “We have got 18 adults and we've got six children in the company and we've got three times as many chairs on the stage at the start than we have got performers and we also have three musicians. It's big. It's really big. It is full-on power and it's an ensemble show fuelled by creativity.”

David, originally from the New Forest, is looking forward to his first time on the Chichester Festival Theatre stage, a stage which has significance for him from way back: “One of my first experiences of theatre was seeing Harry Secombe in The Pickwick Papers in Chichester, and I think the performances just really resonated. When you're young you see different things and different things resonate in different ways. I remember seeing Julius Caesar at the RSC at the same time and there was a huge bust of Caesar on the stage. With that one it was the set and the visuals that I remembered most of all but I think with The Pickwick Papers in Chichester it was most of all Harry Secombe, the actors and the performances.”