The floor of the Royal Exchange’s theatre in the round is covered with Perspex slabs. In the course of the action these are gradually raised to reveal a bed of dark-brown soil bisecting the stage. Its outer edges form rails, along which run two cloth-draped trolleys. Joanna Scotcher’s design dovetails Ellen McDougall’s direction. Both offer a cool, clear vision and blazing intelligence – multilayered metaphorical implications of nature v artifice; of train tracks permitting no deviation. This cleverness, though, is too clinical for the messy complexities of the lives so passionately lived in Leo Tolstoy’s epic 1877 novel.

Jo Clifford’s adaptation neatly manages multiple transitions through time and space. Cuts, though, are brutal: storylines, twisted to fit their new form, lack depth and drama. The effect is soap-operatic. Beautiful Anna rejects dull politician husband Karenin for the dashing young officer, Vronsky. Landowning farmer Levin, spurned by Katy (who has been thrown over by Vronsky in favour of Anna), seeks solace in agricultural projects. Anna’s worldly brother, Oblonsky, and his sincere wife, Dolly, attempt to broker their affairs. We seem to have fallen into a sort of Russian Downton-by-the-Am.

McDougall astutely uses visual devices to layer the action – off-scene characters remain physically present, adding implicit contrast or commentary. But she fuzzes focus and dissipates tension by having characters swirl seemingly endlessly about the stage for no apparent reason. Although the 10-strong cast seem more choreographed than characterised, main roles are distinct; Ony Uhiara’s Anna achieves a luminous intensity in the play’s closing moments.

• Until 2 May. Box office: 0161-833 9833. Then touring until 13 June