The Years Reviews – Almeida Theatre London

"This Annie Ernaux adaptation is a unique, profoundly moving experience"

"A stage version of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s masterpiece, in which five women play the author throughout her life, manages the extraordinary feat of intricately telling the story of a whole life in less than two hours"

"... she is cleaved into five separate past Annies, played through the generations by Harmony Rose-Bremner, Anjli Mohindra, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Deborah Findlay respectively. Between them, a tapestry of history is weaved, constructing the full, extraordinary image of a life that is, in many ways, totally ordinary. The play captures these contradictions, finding laughter in tragedy and devastating detail in mundanity. It moved me in ways theatre often tries to but rarely achieves."

"Despite their physical differences, the actors thread a shared line through their portrayals of Annie. Desire is valued at every age, with words like “ooze” and “penetrate” filling everyday language. Sex scenes are raw, dark, hilarious; often all three."

"Clocking in at nearly two hours without an interval, The Years could drag, yet Arbo’s production is expertly paced and taut."

"Ultimately, it is the emotional experience of seeing an entire existence lived on stage; a fairly unremarkable life made utterly remarkable."

"Five stars for The Years, Almeida Theatre — Annie Ernaux’s book takes on a visceral new life"

"The part of ‘Annie’ is taken by five actors who carry the audience from youth onwards"

"In an ensemble featuring such eminences as Romola Garai, Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay, the younger cast members need to hold their nerve, and Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner do not disappoint. Ernaux is noted for her sexual frankness and almost everyone gets a masturbation scene. Mohindra’s exuberant teenage table-humping and frotting express a raunchy humour one suspects is lacking in the original."

"Rose-Bremner impresses with her impish energy, drumming and singing, not least with a creditable rendition of the backing vocal on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky”. (We have moved on from chansons.) McKee and Findlay bring a gallant vulnerability to the older Annie"

"What is brilliant about this concept is that, as the action moves from postwar to post-millennium, every audience member will find their place somewhere. (I relished the Eighties “feel the burn” aerobics sequence.) By being so intimately self-involved, Ernaux can speak eloquently for women; in fact, for anyone with an open mind and a pulse."

"People may have fainted – but this is magnificent"

"Five brilliant actors bring to life Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux's memoir-cum-collective-history"

"With a quintet of actresses this magnificent, we would happily settle back for a couple of hours and watch them read out the classified ads from the local paper. Yet Harmony Rose-Bremner, Anjli Mohindra, Romola Garai, Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay have embarked upon a far more fascinating project. Under the playfully assured stewardship of Eline Arbo, the Norwegian director who has recently replaced Ivo van Hove at the helm of the trailblazing Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, the five bring to vivid and profound life the eponymous 2008 memoir-cum-collective-history from French Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux."

"As for that permanently magnificent actor McKee, I have never seen her be better than this, as she takes on Annie post-divorce and all consumed by a tempestuous affair. McKee’s enigmatic Modigliani face expresses so much with the mere lifting of an eyebrow; the way she caresses a chair says everything about her discovery of a new midlife wellspring of desire."

"Annie Ernaux’s faint-inducing masterpiece roars into devastating life"

"Eline Arbo’s profound but playful adaptation celebrates the multitudes contained within a single life, as big history is embodied by womanhood – including Romola Garai’s shatteringly raw abortion scene"

"The abortion scene, when it comes, is dramatised by Romola Garai and it is devastating, not only for its physical pain and blood but its sadness (“This thing has no place in language,” she says)."

"What looks at first like airiness in its staging has a forensic rigging. Wit and whimsy sits alongside darkness and you feel the protagonist’s blackest moments keenly but there is sisterliness, too, as other versions of the woman acknowledge the trauma of the moment."

"There is so much emotional depth, surprise and theatrical virtuosity here that it holds you rapt across the ages. What an accomplishment."

"Passionate yet void of sentimentality"

"Eline Arbo’s adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s memoir is a riveting and profound exploration of womanhood, performed with delicacy and nuance"

"It’s a story that resonates powerfully on the stage in a production adapted and directed by Eline Arbo"

"... an exploration of womanhood that is as riveting as it is reflective, passionate yet void of sentimentality, and rebelliously sexual from start to finish. It is simultaneously a personal story, a generational one and universal in its depictions of the female experience."

"There are shreds of Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal to the way so much of Annie’s life is dictated by the patriarchal society that surrounds her, but Ernaux’s story is much gentler. It’s a woman in her own words, unfiltered, impassioned and sincere."

"Extraordinary performances from five actors all playing the writer Annie Ernaux add up to a five-star adaptation of her Nobel prize-winning book"

"With this adventurous stroke, the Almeida yet again proves it is indispensable. Eline Arbo’s production of Annie Ernaux’s Les Années – The Years – gives new life to the uneasy relationship between page and stage, showing that adaptation can be not simply piggybacking but revelation. Arbo’s reimagining, first seen two years ago at Het Nationale Theater in The Hague, and now heard in an English version by Stephanie Bain, cleaves open an important piece of literature and makes its significance glow."

"One of Ernaux’s truths is that we become strangers to our earlier selves. This is embodied brilliantly in Arbo’s production, in which the main character is played by five different actors, varied in shape, height, colour, age, accent, pitch of voice, cast of feature. Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner are glorious – and continually unexpected."

"The uncensored inner life of women that’s unsettling men"

"Verdict: A whole lot of woman"

"And yes, the scene detailing an illegal abortion in 1963 is a harrowing episode in Ernaux’s life story. Recounting it, Garai also reduces the normally unshockable Almeida to mute silence — thanks in part to liberally deployed ketchup, but also because of unsparing descriptions recalling a ‘baby doll on an umbilical cord’. If, however, you have a strong enough stomach for such things — as well as the ability to suspend moral judgements — it is just one (admittedly grim) part of a fascinating, funny and moving history of the late 20th century, seen through the eyes of a very candid French woman growing up, and growing old."

"Between them, the five women create a frank, unsettling and thoughtful performance that might best be described as a game of cherchez la femme."

"A swoon-worthy smash"

"Romola Garai and Gina McKee are among a fine cast at the Almeida playing one woman at various ages"

"... The Years is a hard play to sum up. In the way it smashes the unflinchingly personal up against the panoramically sociopolitical, at speed, it feels like something new under the sun."

"I’ll add a content warning of my own: don’t fret if the first 20-odd minutes feel like a muddle. The cast of (in ascending age order) Harmony Rose-Bremner, Anjil Mohindra, Romola Garai, Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay establish a gang-show sensibility with strenuous jollity."

"Once you know its rules, though, The Years is pretty stunning. Mohindra plays Annie as a Fifties teen triumphantly yet furtively discovering masturbation to plenty of laughs from the women in the crowd particularly."

"The longer it goes on, the more joyous it feels, even as it looks decay and obsolescence in the face. Other characters are deliberately sketchy. You leave, though, understanding this woman’s place in the world — and by extension your own — in a new way. It’s a real eye-opener."

"There's so much to love in this startling and enthralling show"

"This stage adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s novel offers much that’s still unusual in theatre"

"Frankly, I never expected to see Gina McKee enthusiastically humping Romola Garai, fully clothed, on an office chair, while shouting about an idea for a book. But this turns out to be one of the least startling aspects of Eline Arbo’s enthralling stage adaptation of Nobel Laureate Annie Ernaux’s 2008 novel, which filters seven decades of world history through a French, female lens and a fictionalised version of her own life. With minor reservations, I absolutely loved this."

"It is all performed by an astonishing, all-female ensemble, ranging in age from 70s to 20s: Deborah Findlay, McKee, Garai, Anjli Mohindra and impressive newcomer Harmony Rose-Bremner."

"My reservations? It’s yet another play where a writer bangs on about writing and showcases their own impeccable cultural taste"

"Anyway, you should see it for this cast. Findlay may be less well known outside theatre circles (despite a strong screen career), but her presence is a guarantee of quality. McKee’s blend of nuance and swagger here made me think she should be the next Doctor Who. Garai is commandingly brilliant. Mohindra and Rose-Bremner are bold and charming. A winner."

"Vivid, moving memoir play that celebrates the astonishment of being alive"

"Elegantly adapted by Eline Arbo – the new boss of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam, aka Ivo van Hove’s replacement – English-language stage version ‘The Years’ is a 60-odd year journey through France, the West, women’s liberation and more. But what I really took from it was Ernaux’s vivid wonderment at the fact she existed at all these points in history – life as time travel."

"It is a superb ensemble – the performers are charismatic, fierce, playful and it feels like their personalities are being intermingled with that of Ernaux. There’s a sense that the story shared in this room belongs to them and Arbo as much as to the original author – a feeling of universality and sisterhood bubbles under the surface."

"In ‘The Years’ none of what we’re seeing is really ‘the past’, ‘the future’ or ‘now’; it’s a human life, which includes all these events equally. Arbo’s production is not technically flashy, but a final scene in which the actors freeze into a tableau of photos of Ernaux from across her life is intensely moving, everything everywhere all at once."

"Bold but reverential adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s hit novel"

"Playing Ernaux through the ages, Romola Garai, Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay brilliantly extracted the drama’s emotional heft"

"Hers [Eline Arbo] is definitely a brave and ambitious take on Ernaux’s book. She leans into its themes of female emancipation and the circular nature of history and memory. However, her reverence for her source material hampers its execution on stage; she doesn’t quite manage to slough off its limitations, which prevents the play from becoming a truly adventurous take on Ernaux’s work."

"In this production, it’s the acting that saves the day. Seasoned actresses Romola Garai, Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay are demonstrably well-versed in extracting the drama’s emotional heft and they work in tandem with with newcomers like Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner, whose rendition of Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky is a highlight."

"The performances are strangely inert and mannered in the beginning, no doubt as a function of reciting chunks of Ernaux’s no-frills text which doesn’t lend itself to theatrical embodiment. It took a while but when the performances became less po-faced and more playful, that’s when the play found space for its poetic stride."