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Michela Meazza. Photo: Ed Reeve

The Years at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London (2025)

I didn’t know too much about it and to begin with I wasn’t at all sure about the set and the rehearsal room feel. But, by the end of The Years I was loving it and I thought it one the cleverest things I’d ever seen. I like that it won me over.

We followed the story of one woman played by five different actors, each actor describing a decade of this woman’s life. I work a lot with imagery and I liked that each section began with a verbal description of a picture: each woman saying something like: “I’m found in this position, I’m wearing this...” And from there they started describing the year, the decade and what was happening in the world. I loved the fact that it’s a woman going through all these different phases – it’s good to celebrate what women experience, especially at a time of great historical shifts for women.

I’m fascinated by what we remember and what may have been added [to our memories], maybe by what our parents told us. The play was all in that grey area of: ‘Is this what I remember, or what someone told me?’ And everything was mainly described by suggestion, rather than being literally acted out. But there was this big kitchen table that remained throughout the decades. It’s true – you go to people’s houses and you think: “If this table could talk... it holds so much.” And at the end, all the sheets that had been used as a backdrop for each section hung from metal sculptures moving like mobiles, but with photos projected on to them.

And, of course, there was the abortion scene. I wasn’t directly affected by it, I think because I work in theatre so was able to mentally step outside and take a different view. But I was amazed that people could be emotionally and physically affected by something that is spoken word. It wasn’t film, there were no special effects... I walked away thinking: “Yes!” Theatre can do this, get an emotional response from people on stage with so little. You don’t get that from watching something on screen. Theatre relies on audience’s imaginations, what it triggers. And that live response is what I love: how much your brain can hold and the impact that can have on your body, in this case making some people go dizzy and faint. And you think: “Why?” A brilliant reminder of why theatre is so important.
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Analysis – David Benedict

First seen in Dutch in The Hague in 2022, Norwegian director Eline Arbo’s production of The Years had its first London presentation at the Almeida Theatre before quickly transferring to the West End. An ideal ensemble cast of Anjli Mohindra, Harmony Rose-Bremner, Romola Garai, Gina McKee and Deborah Findlay played the woman whose life is patiently depicted across 60 years, adapted from the celebrated International Booker Prize-shortlisted autobiographical novel by Annie Ernaux who, three years later, won the Nobel Prize for her body of work over more than 50 years.

Set in northern France, the play, an adaptation by Arbo herself, in an English-language version by Stephanie Bain, spans a life from being a young daughter born during the Second World War to life as a grandmother. The personal is contrasted by and played in complement with shifting political perspectives of the world beyond in landmarks from the arrival of washing machines, the contraceptive pill and the feminist movement, through to modern womanhood.

Serious as it sounds, the play was surprisingly playful and happy to elicit laughs along the way, not to mention the pleasure of the cast singing a couple of songs. The most visceral moment was the depiction of the abortion, played with immense care, sadness and restraint by Garai. Audience members fainted most nights. Interestingly, the majority of those affected so directly were, reportedly, men.