The Years - Almeida / Harold Pinter

Thanks for the review. Am keen to see this - and stupidly delayed booking, so now only the extreme sides downstairs are available. Do you think they'd be ok for this?

I saw this tonight, and I thought that it was well-acted, but the 5 actresses could only do so much with a poor script. As MrBunbury said, this has big ambitions, "telling the story of a woman born in 1940 in twelve moments of her life and linking that to what was happening in the world and how women's lives changed (or did not) over seventy years." But for me at least, it failed miserably. Its look at the cultural history of the late 20th century was maddeningly superficial, and its references to politics and world events ranged from shallow to offensive (as, in the 1990s section, when Croats and Kosovars were described as "savages"). And then the personal narrative lacked specificity or curiosity about people other than Annie (the central figure). We learn that she largely defined herself through relationships with a series of men, but none of these men are given names or even rough characterizations. I ended up with the impression that Annie led a pretty charmed middle-class existence, and nothing really eventful ever happened in her 70+ years on earth, other than her abortion.

The 10 minute abortion monologue was the one point where the play actually worked for me (although it was also the moment when several audience members walked out). For just that scene, the action slowed down to describe a single moment in vivid, gruesome detail. It's too bad the rest of the play lacked that specificity and descriptive language. But I might be alone in my negative opinion; everyone else in my section immediately rose up to give the play a standing ovation.

Apologies for the amount of spoiler tags in here, but it relates to the scene to which MrBunbury referred, however the Times talks about the nature of the scene, which some board members might prefer to be unaware of before going to the show...

scene leaves theatregoers feeling faint


Link in spoiler text because it divulges the plot point (the story is from the Times)


Sounds like the Q&A on Monday could be lively...

(edit. I see that prefab referred to it also above giving the topic, but I've put the tags in now and I'm not going to the effort of taking them out...)

Who does the abortion monologue?

They could release heavily detailed triggers to make people aware of possible issues.

Of course, if they are too detailed then you might need less detailed triggers for the previous ones.

But these less detailed triggers might also trigger someone. So you might need... and so ad nauseuam.

I found this utterly stunning. A whole life in 2 hours and everything that encompasses. Lots of humour, pathos, nostalgia and, yes, trauma. Yes *that* scene is a hard watch/listen, but also an essential part of this woman’s life (and many other lives). It’s also a very small section of a much larger tapestry and it would be a huge shame if that’s the only reason this play is spoken about.

All five actresses are brilliant and watching the story pass through them one at a time as she ages is beautifully moving. I found the play really worked a spell me, a little unsure at the start and then slowly realising quite how much I was loving it, building to a really simple but visually stunning finish.

Honestly I think it’s the best thing I’ve seen in 2024 so far, a very easy 5 stars from me.

Very, very deserving. It's an outstanding masterpiece, adapted with great elegance and warmth by Eline Arbo, and fitting perfectly within the Almeida space. There are obvious connections in theme to Complicite's Mnemonic, but this reaches arguably greater levels of humanity and character, with the fast-paced but descriptive style lending itself well to the evocation of a person's life in its totality. The cast is stellar, synchronised and sophisticated - Gina McKee is a clear standout, utterly mesmerising in her section and throughout. And the overall visual concept - which I won't spoil - is marvellously executed where it could fall into cliché, alongside one of the best, most atmospheric lighting designs I've seen in a long time.

This feels like the kind of work the Almeida deserves - bold and fresh, bringing the innovation of the European stage to London, while maintaining the gravitas and pathos of the big, weighty classics that are so often staged there. Easy 5*.

This a big hit! Wonder if it will come back again given the relatively short run and rave reviews.

Giant also has transfer potential.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I agree the description of people as "savages" did seem disturbing, but I think that describing the Croats and Kosovars as "behaving like savages" was, in context, a self-critique and confession by the author about how she/her character didn't care about history any more in the nineties (having previously been politically engaged in the sixties), becoming insular and complacent, and she was suggesting that her whole generation had become similarly insular and complacent, materialistic and obsessed with personal affairs, and no longer caring to inform themselves about stuff like whether the Hutus or the Tutsis were the good guys or the bad guys, considering themselves above it all.

I agree that the author of the source material is incredibly self-involved (the funniest part, for me, was Gina McKee's portrayal of a woman who cares more about her married lover's bed than anything in the world - including her kids!), but, for me, that's what's great about the piece, that she's willing to describe negative traits about herself that most of us would keep to ourselves. I mean, her kids now know how low they were in her hierarchy of priorities in the nineties lol.

Gina McKee does such an amazing job. She's so relaxed, which of course makes us relaxed, and is, for me, the funniest version of this woman (by a whisker, with Anjili Mohindra a very close second), where the woman has abandoned her previous "desire to please," now her kids are grown up, and McKee's commitment to be constantly smilingly shamelessly debauched is gloriously funny.

By comparison, this show is nowhere near as endearing as Alistair McDowall's "All of It" at the Royal Court, where Kate O'Flynn portrayed an adorably shy and nervy ordinary woman from birth (babbling like in Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist") to death, and that's precisely because, in this show, this woman isn't as unrelentingly ordinary or nice.

What she is is a talented author who wants to save herself from vanishing into "the vast anonymity of a distant generation" by documenting everything that has ever meant anything to her. She's like an analogue version of one of those people in a sci-fi movie who copies themselves onto a chip so they can live forever lol.

What this play does SO well is split this woman into all the different people she has been through her life (we're never the same person over time), having 5 actors play 5 different versions of her, and since on stage these 5 voices persist from beginning to end, it's like the younger versions of the dancers in Sondheim's "Follies," interacting with their older selves, times 5!

One striking image that you absolutely wouldn't get in the linear novel is when all five versions of this woman do exercises on stage at the same time. Poor funny flailing Deborah Findlay makes the scene!

The reason, that Mohindra and McKee play the funniest versions of this woman, is that we are at our funniest when we care too much (our teen years) and couldn't care less (middle age), which are the funniest attitudes we can take. And Mohindra is marvellous at caring too much just as McKee is marvellous at caring too little.

Suffering escalates as we get old, but also when we experiences traumas, which is why the experiences documented by Deborah Findlay (old age) and Romola Garai (illegal abortion) are the most moving. Garai, in particular, has to suffer such intense experiences, and really puts us through the grinder by feeling all of it.

And Harmony Rose-Bremner is delightful as the bright bushy-eyed child self of the woman, when everything is happening for the first time!

I really LOVED this show, as it really gets you thinking about all of life (and death) and how terrible you can be for large parts of it lol, so I feel it deserves the 5 stars that the critics have been giving it.

I haven't seen the play yet. But having read the book, isn't the we implying that our personal experience is shared with our generation? If I remember well, different sections of the book begin with lists of things/facts that happen around the same time of the personal experiences that follow. Maybe they have got rid of that in the play.