Be prepared. This play does not hold back. The Years is a bitingly honest account of the female experience in all its glorious messiness, viscerally expressed in a stream of storytelling mixed with blood, gore and raw emotions to describe peak stages of a woman’s life from childhood, adulthood and old age.
Eline Arbo’s adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s memoir is a deeply moving portrayal of what it actually feels like to be female during a period of great social change. And in the play, this woman is not celebrating her achievements so much as offering brutal, insightful observations rarely seen onstage.
Published in 2008, The Years won the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature when Ernaux turned 82. Her writing mercurially shifts between the emotional and political, taut with historic and domestic details documenting changes in culture and Ernaux’s own stance as a female exploring her options within a rapidly changing society. As the programme notes say: “it’s a sociological document of the times as well as female documentation” of sexuality and motherhood.
There’s been much talk about the scene where Romola Garai as the young Annie recreates the experience of a hellish backstreet abortion. Garai handles this masterfully. While blood pours down her legs in red rivulets, the production was halted twice during the two-hour-long performance (no interval) I attended. Such interruptions significantly jolt you out of the drama as the production manager appears onstage suggesting people remain seated whilst others are ushered out of the auditorium.
Given this is the West End transfer from the Almeida’s sold-out run last year, there are trigger warnings at every turn in the foyer, so such a theme comes as no surprise. I felt sorry for the actor forced into recreating such a disturbing moment, but Garai picked up where she left off effortlessly.
Importantly, this act is a singular momentary scene in a stream of dramatic events handled sensitively and with great feeling, especially during the aftermath of the abortion where the innocent Annie is left with a foetus and has no idea what to do with it. It's brutal but searingly truthful, and with that comes a stirring empathy for the young Annie, inexperienced with no guidance or support.
Originally adapted and directed by Arbo for the Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, the author is segmented into five Annies, played throughout her life by Harmony Rose-Bremner, Anjli Mohindra, Garai, Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay, and the words fly off the page, seeping into believable characterisations representing each stage of the author's life.
While the actors share no resemblance, they create a visually powerful picture of Ernaux’s incredible journey hurtling through the 20th and into the 21st century. I love the domestic mundanities that rub up against the extraordinary. The discovery of technology from the fridge-freezer to Apple computers to world events that shook and changed society from the Second World War to the Algerian War of Independence.
The drama opens onto the five women moodily silhouetted against a plain, black set. They appear dressed in either black or white, and they speak in various regional accents across the UK—with no French accents. The collective “we,” never “I”, allows the different actors playing Annie at various stages of her life to become one.
Throughout each section of her life, Annie’s passion for journaling is evident, but domestic life obstructs her writing a full-blown novel until much later in life. There are affectionate scenes that resemble the simpler things in life. Sitting in a park with pushchairs and new mums, cradling their babies. They listen enviously to trailblazing Ernaux regaling tales of going to the cinema, too early for fellow mothers who couldn’t bring themselves to leave their infants yet. While her pals want to learn the guitar or paint, the author only seeks to write a whole book about “people, memories and time.” Such themes sit at the heart of the play. During each key developmental moment of her life from girlhood to womanhood, world events, sexuality and the search for freedom dominate.
On sexuality, the scenes are funny, sad and moving. There’s the encounter with an older boy called H on camp, one of her first sexual experiences. Longing, shame and the desire for self-knowledge drive her forward, but she is violated, too innocent to complain, then ostracised from the sneering camp community. And earlier on, the teenager Annie discovers masturbation, humping the corner of the table to experiment. Somehow, there are comic moments in amongst the tragedy. This doesn’t lessen the sadness, but it does create a fully believable and rounded memory of a life full of rich experience and learning along the way.
Over seven decades, we see Annie emerge from the ration books of postwar childhood in suburban 1940s France right through to becoming a grandparent after the millennium. As if we are given an old photo album, white sheets are used as backdrops for photo poses and then hoisted onto lines hung like flags with words such as “Whore” scrawled onto them in red paint, create a sense of danger and revolution.
In the final scene when Annie is an older lady played by Findlay in perfectly timed nuanced performance, the mood is less tumultuous, somewhat quieter. Watching a life played out in all its stages from the innocence of youth to the wisdom of old age is a beautiful and moving experience to watch.