Over a decade ago, on a Friday night in what was Piccadilly’s Café de Paris, cabaret singer Dusty Limits joked that “the only thing that should require a trigger warning is a gun.” Going by the reactions to The Years so far, he may want to make an exception.
It’s not that Eline Arbo’s stage version of Annie Ernaux’s autobiography lacks sufficient guidance on what one might expect, but “graphic depictions of abortion, blood, a coerced sexual encounter, and sexual content” don’t really cover the actual visceral impact of what happens when the curtain goes up. That might sound like the kind of hokey hyperbole dreamed up by a desperate marketing department, but there’s no escaping the facts: on at least four occasions during the latest press week, the production was stopped during (and sometimes also just after) its most gruesome scene.
That shouldn’t be a surprise to those who have followed this fascinating work’s rise. There were similar reactions during The Years’ earlier run at the Almeida, and the book itself didn’t shy away from depicting the sharper sides of Ernaux’s ups and downs. That being said, this is far from being a schlocky horror show: in Arbo’s capable and sensitive hands, this engaging journey, depicted by five actors, is by turns both tender and emotionally tenderising.
Aided and abetted by the others, each actor takes the lead for a segment of the Frenchwoman’s journey. Through Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner, we see the cheeky, charming, and challenging aspects of girlhood – not least pubic hair, periods, and frenetic bouts of masturbation – before Romola Garai steps up to take us through the sensations and consequences of early relationships and marriage. A luminous Gina McKee picks up the baton for the most satisfying part, as she describes her time with younger lovers while traversing a wistful middle age, bookended by divorce and the arrival of grandchildren. The final section sees Deborah Findlay in the new millennium, musing over her past and reflecting on what was and what could have been.
That might all sound a little too Proustian and, as we ponderously wade to the end of the two-hour running time sans interval, it can certainly feel that way. What saves this from being another worthy, arty entry in modern theatre is a combination of scintillating yet simple direction. Snapshots are captured through intense incident descriptions or as picture captions, as the lead actor poses in front of a white sheet. There’s a measured flow and ease of movement, which speaks to many hours of rehearsal and a cast that is thoroughly on board with the vision and purpose of this piece.
Implicit within the storyline are the great strides Western society made in the last century when it comes to women and their rights and – by extension – how we have reached something of an inflection point. Arbo highlights how many of the advancements taken nowadays for granted, not least universal access to contraception and legal abortion, affect the well-being and freedom of Ernaux and her friends. Yet here we are in 2025, with those very things being restricted or abolished at pace in the U.S., alongside the curtailing of DEI programmes that improved the working lives of women, cis and trans alike. On this side of the pond, the picture is materially better, but – with the opposition leader questioning maternity pay and almost 70,000 rapes being reported to the police in the last year on record – let’s not hang out the bunting just yet.
The Years is playing at Harold Pinter Theatre until 19 April. Romola Garai will be in performances until 8 March.
Book tickets at atgtickets.com
Words by Franco Milazzo
Photos by Helen Murray
