The Years
Harold Pinter Theatre

THE YEARS opens in the West End following an almost universally rapturous reception at the Almeida last August. Now with the same cast, same director and same inspirational rendition, it has to be a winner. 

The play – based on the literary masterpiece by Nobel Prize-winning Annie Ernaux – follows the life of one Anna, born in 1940 in France. 

This is not, though, merely a simple, personal tale. Rather, with its precise historical perspective and backdrop of world events, it shines a light on all female war babies and boomers. And, fearless in its truth-telling and definitive in its theatrical panache, it places some of the most defining – and least public – of women’s intrinsic impulses in full view. 
 
Algeria, Vietnam, student protest, the consumer society, Aids, Le Pen, and the ever-threatening World War III join other prevailing forces of our time to contextualise the action. Meanwhile, an inventive and exhilarating cast demystify the private life of women, whose world is punctuated as much by blood and the vagina as by the H bomb, a new fridge or Bosnia. The female sex urge and bodily demands remain ever-present, even as social change offers new choices and mores.

Five actors, on stage at all times, take it in turns to play Anna at various points of her life, while also enacting all other characters. Harmony Rose-Bremner – the youngest of the five – buzzes with vitality and sings in English and French like a goddess. Anjli Mohindra authentically portrays the teenage years with a startling combination of in-your-face sexuality, heart-breaking vulnerability and studious conformity. Romola Garai captures the iconic look of the era, oozing star quality even as blood gushes down her thighs. Gina McKee brings her famed softness and openly tender aura to the mix. And Deborah Findley completes the spectrum with the superlative ease drawn from her formidable Shakespearean pedigree. All is delivered at a cracking pace and the whole troupe provide a master class in cast-audience rapport.

There are, of course, equivocations:

Men, for instance, barely intrude. Not that this play is anti-men but in it they are shadowy aliens, their “difference” typified in the scenes between Anna and her two teenage sons, not to mention Anna’s unhappy deflowering at the hands of a careless brute. Also, only two genders are acknowledged, each fully distinct from the other – an unfashionable concept! Subsequently, romantic love is shelved and as for motherhood... it’s only a phase.

Eline Arbo’s production, though, is beautifully judged and peppered with exquisite music. The frequent and potent physicality matches the literary genius of the author’s words as captured in Stephanie Bain’s translation, and intelligent humour complements more painful moments. Designer Juul Dekker’s central rectangular table earths a woman’s life in the ever-practical, as does the stream of staged “photographs” that clock the passing of time.

Altogether, this is an original focus on women, exposing “choice” as a limited concept when our biology and the fast-moving world catapult us at lightning speed through years of tumult.

A work of piercing clarity.  

Runs until April 19. Box office: 020 7206 1174, haroldpintertheatre.co.uk