Boiling bloodlines – unhappy families at the double

Malcolm Sinclair (Charles) and a sizzling Lindsay Duncan (Dora) in Dear Octopus.
PHOTO: MARC BRENNER

THE OPENING line of Anna Karenina is contradicted by two opening nights. “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy suggested. But a pair of domestic dramas dated 86 years apart feature boiling bloodlines with strikingly similar difficulties.

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