What is a woman’s life, when remembered? Achievements, failures, gains, losses? What part does society play? And does the answer change according to who is doing the remembering? In this electrifying production, an adaptation of French writer Anne Ernaux’s autobiographical novel of the same name, five British actresses ranging in age from early twenties to early seventies play the unnamed protagonist at different stages of her life, from the war to the Millennium. The result is a tour de force of event, emotion and engagement.
Ernaux considered these questions in her book, which reflects on her own journey from post-war optimism to post-Modernist anxiety and encompasses almost every social-political shift in France (and the wider world) along the way. It was recently adapted for the stage by Eline Arbo in her native Holland and that same play now reaches Britain, with the text translated and re-versioned by the Almeida’s own Stephanie Bain but Arbo still directing. The cast act every other part as well as the principal, and narrate. They also shift scenery, play instruments and sing...
On the theatre’s customary bare stage, backed by a plain brick wall, a white sheet is held up by two of the cast whilst a third describes the ‘photograph’ we are seeing and the others act it out. A young girl, age about six (Harmony Rose-Bremner, here amusingly pouty), stands on a beach looking serious; she is about to join a family meal. The sheet becomes the table cloth and the others join in to portray the first of a dozen family gatherings that we will see in the next two hours. For that little girl these were boring, but also the moment in her life “when time started to flow”. Later the “school calendar replaced the cycle of the seasons” and at subsequent meals boorish uncles – Romola Garai with fat cigar; astonishing – make inappropriate comments.
Later still the girl, now a teenager, discovers self-pleasure in a frantic masturbatory montage in which Anjli Mohindra co-opts knickers, chair back, table and more to assist; it’s hilarious but there is a serious point too – a small rebellion against repressive tradition that would otherwise deny a young woman the first of many milestones toward adulthood and knowledge. The darker side of a growing girl’s sexuality is soon surfaced, however, with Mohindra involved in what the Almeida calls in its trigger warnings a 'coerced sexual encounter' with a holiday fling. Bravely and brilliantly performed by Mohindra alone playing both male and female parts alternately, the girl is carefully presented as enduring and accepting the situation, conforming yes but once again questioning expectations.
Bigger rebellions also feature with the first of several references to Algeria, prefiguring others to Vietnam, Mao and American civil rights. This maturing conscience across the world is mirrored with our girl who, of course, stands for every girl in Ernaux’s novel and the play, which both adopt the collective as a result: “We suddenly saw the family from the outside”.
In her twenties and thirties, the unplanned pregnancy of the girl – now Garai – becomes another effort to secure a freedom (abortion being illegal), just it arrived as a consequence of another restriction (lack of easily available birth control). Her solution, one adopted by thousands, is an unlicensed abortion, the agonising stages of which are laid bare in a heartfelt performance that is as hard to hear as some found it to watch, thanks to committed and sensitive playing from Garai. Only arrival of the Pill changed this, after which “We could be so free in our bodies – as free as a man”.
Thus a new photograph from the late Sixties brings us to new life, a now-beaming girl welcoming a wanted child (deftly and convincingly fashioned by Garai from another sheet in seconds). The years of early motherhood follow, alongside the development of middle class consumerism – “we experienced the power of the hi fi speakers,” intones the narration, deadpan, before segueing into a witty, ‘trippy’ evening party soundtracked to White Rabbit that stays just on the right side of parody. Now, too, “only facts presented on the TV were real”.
By the Eighties, the popularity of electro-pop and the aerobics workout leads to another archly funny scene in which our cast attempt a Jane Fonda-along to Tell It To My Heart by Taylor Dayne, each wonderfully in character for their age. The mood soon changes however and the baton passes to Gina McKee, embodying the ‘we’ who “continue to see blood after fifty” and so “thought we’d outsmarted time”. For the family she is now “the hub of a wheel that could not turn without her” but still has those urges explored earlier. To prove it McKee steps into the spotlight, sits astride a chair Keeler-style, and tells us how she took a lover; tells us, but also shows us by performing an exquisitely elegant, remarkably highly charged 'duet' with a chair representing the man. It’s a beautiful sequence, quite the equal of Garai’s or Mohindra‘s, and has its own equally effective coda with the former once again assuming a male role.
As the Millenium approaches Deborah Findlay takes the girl into her last years and the digital age, but recalling, too, herself in bed with her mother, her first boyfriend and so on. As we age, she notes, we no longer feel we are changing but instead realise everything else is. The events of 9/11 soon prove this. Her son has a brother, the two now adults themselves, working in computers where “the click of mouse on screen became the measure of time”. Here it’s worth noting that despite the running time the timespan is quite accelerated, not always helpfully, and some of the finer political – and even social – points might perhaps have been better or more organically made than via a cast member declaiming from the side of the stage. The tricky question of whether a full cultural transplant of the French references into the British experience might have been better – very few Brits, I suspect, know what Minitel was, but then I know I missed others myself – might have to await a revival.
The final scene brings together all that we have seen so far in a warm, natural and deeply moving way that explains the staging and appears true to the ethos of the author, whose “writing gives form to my absent future” and who believes that individual memories form a “common time” for all of us.
This was a superb evening, far more satisfying than I expected. As with almost all of the Almeida's productions, the emptiness of the venue is filled completely by the richness of the lighting, music and of course acting. Mohindra, Garai and McKee each have scenes in which they excel though McKee I think just edges it. Newcomer Rose-Bremner was impressive and Findlay provided solid support. I'm surprised the abortion scene generated the reaction it did compared to that coerced encounter and it’s good to have the Almeida confirm to me that no changes were made to the production as a result.
If the past is a foreign country, and they do things differently there, it’s one we should all visit.
The Years continues at the Almeida Theatre, London N1 until Saturday 31 August 2024; at the time of writing many performances are now sold out or have limited availability but you may still be able to get tickets
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