Eline Arbo and a supremely talented ensemble bring The Years to glorious life at the Almeida Theatre
“Memory never stops”
Norwegian director Eline Arbo took up the mantle of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam’s new Artistic Director late last year, succeeding Ivo van Hove, so the Almeida have themselves a bit of a treat here with the first major UK run of one of her productions. That is an adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux’s The Years, performed by an astonishing quintet of actors, all embodying the protagonist at different stages of her life.
Originally produced as De Jaren by Het Nationale Theater in The Hague, Netherlands in 2022, The Years follows a woman’s life and the multitudinous ways in which the personal and political intersect. Specifically during the second half of the twentieth century, as she – like Ernaux – was born during WWII, we glide through straitened times as a child to the sexual freedom of the 60s, the hippyish 70s to the 80s woman trying to ‘have it all’ and on and on.
As Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner variously take on the role of the woman and all the supporting characters of her life, there’s a powerful sense of the importance of one’s own narrative but also how that narrative develops, how thoroughly we change as people that we’re even strangers to our younger selves. At the same time, there’s a connectedness too, an acknowledgement of the pain always rippling through the company.
Conflicts in Algeria and Vietnam smash up against AIDS and abortions, feminism against fascism, masturbation against married life. On the central table of Juul Dekker’s set, these tales of womanhood set forth, a pulsing thread of music (including Desireless’ iconic 80s hit ‘Voyage, voyage’) draws us through the almost two hours of the play, its thought-provoking musings wriggling into the psyche, delivered so achingly well as they are by this company.
