The Years – Harold Pinter Theatre

This is a very engrossing and imaginative dramatisation of Annie Emaux’s partly autobiographical book. It charts the progress of a woman’s life chronologically from 1941 to 2006. The woman is unnamed, as are all the men and women that she comes into contact with.

The play uses five actresses of different ages to sequentially play the different periods of her life as she experiences childhood, adolescence, early sexual encounters, including a rather horrific abortion, and then moves through marriage, motherhood and divorce. The changing social mores, political events, technological changes and the evolving consumer society of those 80 years are the accompaniment to the changes in her own life.

The Years was formerly presented at the Almeida Theatre to great critical acclaim. The staging is simple without any scenery. A table sits centre stage, which is the focus of much of the action as family dinner scenes throughout the ages mark the changing dynamics within the family.

In an inspired piece of staging by director Elino Arbo, the large white tablecloths used on the table become the backdrop to depictions by the actors of old photos which also mark the different stages of her life, or are scrunched up to represent children and animals. Finally, they are hung by the cast around the perimeter of the stage, marked with the evidential stains of her life events. At the end of the production they were rearranged by the cast into an extremely effective final tableau onto which the cast’s photographs were projected.

The acting by the five cast members is of an extremely high order. They work as an ensemble, all staying onstage all the time. I would particularly cite Romola Garai’s depiction of the abortion scene, which was raw and moving, not because of its blood, but because of the emotion which she put into conveying the horror of having to undergo a backstreet abortion. At some performances, including the press night that I attended, this was too much for some members of the audience and the performance had to be paused for a short while to allow the front of house staff to cope with distressed audience members. Be aware of this if you are thinking of attending this production, but this is not a reason to avoid it. There are also a considerable number of sexual references and depiction of sexual activity.

Inevitably, condensing 80 years of life into a 2 hours stage drama requires numerous short scenes and the narrative lacks depth. We learn a lot about what happened to the woman, but not much about how or why. Overall, however, this is an exceptional production which I would thoroughly recommend.

The Years runs at the Harold Pinter Theatre until 19th April 2025. Tickets are available from  https://www.atgtickets.com/shows/the-years/harold-pinter-theatre/

Reviewer: Paul Ackroyd

Reviewed: 5th February 2025

North West End UK Rating: