Anna X, at Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre

Newly crafted multi-millionaire Ariel (Tom Stokes) struck up a conversation with the exotic, mysterious, attractive Anna X (Becca Galvin) at a party in New York in 2016.

From there, he couldn’t get enough of her. In short, he was smitten from the get go. 

Photos by Simon Fazio and Chris Parker

In her early to mid twenties, Anna proved to be aloof, revealing little, if anything, at the best of times. That only made him hungry to learn more.

She was Russian, fashionable and had a great interest in expensive art, having secured an internship at a magazine after she landed in New York.

She was also socially aware and was regularly talked about online. 

He was 32 years of age and had drifted through his “disastrous” 20s with a “floundering career”.

Then he left his fiancé and moved to New York, having developed an exclusive dating app for the glitterati in less than a day that venture capitalists bought into.

Not afraid to party hard, Anna and Ariel mixed with the hoity-toity on the social and art scene.

She travelled regularly as part of her work and played hard to get. 

But they grew closer and she started putting the hard word on him to invest in her ventures, which he began doing.

In fact, he was spending big money on her, but he didn’t seem to mind.

And then came the day of reckoning.

The story of the illusive Anna X by English writer Joseph Charlton was inspired by the real-life tale of con artist and fraudster Anna Sorokin, aka Anna Delvey.

The latter’s dirty dealings took place in New York between 2013 and 2017.

First performed at the now defunct VAULT Festival in London in 2019, Anna X had a West End run in 2021. Red Stitch’s production marks its Australian premiere.

It is a compelling story of greed and social climbing, very well realised by Becca Galvin and Tom Stokes, who play multiple roles with distinction.

In short, both milk their characters for all they are worth, on occasions with extreme accents.

Among other parts, Becca also plays Ariel’s former fiancé, while Stokes additionally assumes the persona of Anna’s pretentious magazine editor.

Dramatic and humorous, under the direction of Tait De Lorenzo, everything is amped up to project a resounding picture of excess and entitlement.

The evocative set design by Louisa Fitzgerald is largely constructed from a series of artistic building blocks of different shapes. 

Fitzgerald is also responsible for the faux fur and enticing Anna costuming we witness in Act II.

While I recognise the value of the thumping, up tempo music to project the New York party scene, it made hearing the dialogue clearly difficult when it was turned up. That was especially noticeable at the start of the play.

Still that is a relatively minor irritant, as Anna X is an alluring portrait of how one of the most human of traits is to believe what we would love to believe.

One hour 50 minutes including interval, it is on at Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre until 21^st June, 2026.