(seen at the afternoon performance on 14th August 2024)
In its local library, there was always a rack of “modern literature” paperbacks. “Foreign” names, usually French. Always black covers with white writing. If you blew the dust off and borrowed one, you would find they differed wildly from what you were used to.
Longer words, more situations than plot, and random chapters of unrelated philosophical thought as a sort of motorway service station mid-journey. When you finished one, you had learned something you knew you couldn’t have learned anywhere else.
This play is the theatrical equivalent.
Based on autobiographical “Les Annees” by Annie Ernaux, adapted into a play for Dutch audiences by Eline Arbo - from which Stephanie Bain derives this English version, it follows an ordinary woman, Annie’s, life.
Five actors share the role, also playing all the other characters who aid, abuse or simply discard her. A series of photographs, posed in front of a white sheet as someone describes the scene and “reads” the date and location on the back, ingeniously introduces each section of the tale and reminds us of the time period.
From birth, 1941, when photographs were rare and precious, to 2006, when longevity and wisdom shine, those background clothes are smeared with life and hung as tapestries before SPOILER ALERT becoming an integral part of the final moments of the piece. SPOILER ENDS.
Set designer Juul Dekker heightens the significance with a “circle of life” track defining the playing area. A floor rail allows the cast to push around objects from each time period, endlessly combining and splitting items as they rise and fall in significance and need.
It adds to Eline Arbo’s fluid direction, which incorporates many snatches of period song (Thijs van Vuure) and moments where Varja Klosse can light with intensity or blur into shadow.
Anjli Mohindra as the young teenage Annie is first to make a strong impression. Her carefree, worried years as self-awareness begins are some of the most fluid and compelling scenes.
Romola Garai gets the most drama. A much-reported abortion sequence (SPOILER ALERT around 45 minutes into the play SPOILER ENDS) the monkey found oddly not as distressing as events with a knitting needle preceding it. The aftermath is subdued, which feels right.
Gina McKee takes us through middle age, yearning for one last great love, making do with what she finds. Deborah Findlay moves on with grace, yet without yielding the priceless experiences acquired. There is pain, but also joy. Every emotion written as much in expression and gesture as spoken.
Ernaux, Arbo and Bain never fail to demonstrate for us how life truly is for most women. There is no artificial drama, just a sequence of events which are more than often shaped for them by men – both those closest and those in control of society as a whole. Men take - being birthed, raised, abandoning physically and emotionally, giving back only in short and emotionally confusing bursts.
Female sexuality is raw, yet hidden; when expressed it is still under male control – the pill arrives to liberate, but a male doctor won’t dispense it. Without it, don’t ask about abortion, a female retired nurse will attend to her sisters’ needs in secret. And if anybody reading this thinks that much has changed in 2024 – they have missed the message of this play and of women in general.
Even if there is a slight introversion, emotions shared between those on stage which are not fully turned outward towards the audience, this is a beautifully crafted, truly cerebral experience.
5 stars.
Photo Credit: Ali Wright. Used by kind permission of the Almeida Theatre.