★★★★★ ‘A masterpiece - extraordinarily profound and yet playful drama’ - The Guardian
The five-star sold out production of The Years transfers to the West End for 12 weeks only.
Based on Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux’s fearless masterpiece, five actors create an unapologetic portrait of a woman shaped by her rapidly-changing world.
Memory never stops. It pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.
She strikes a pose and the camera shutter clicks: A child playing in the debris of the Second World War. Click. A student discovering parties and men’s bodies. Click. An activist fighting for the right to choose. Click. A wife picking out a velvet sofa. Click. A mother taking her eldest to judo. Click. A lover seducing a younger man. Click. A grandmother presenting her granddaughter to the camera. Click.
Deborah Findlay, Romola Garai, Gina McKee, Anjli Mohindra and Harmony Rose-Bremner give ‘extraordinary performances’ (The Observer) in Eline Arbo’s inventive adaptation, following sold out runs at the Almeida Theatre and International Theatre Amsterdam.
Coming to the West End for a strictly limited 12 week run beginning January 2025. Romola Garai will be in performances of The Years through Saturday 8 March. Further casting to be announced at a later date.
★★★★★ ‘A unique, profoundly moving experience. It moved me in ways theatre often tries to but rarely achieves’ The Independent
__Assisted Perfromances:__
BSL, 8 March, 2:30pm
Captioned, 15 March, 2:30pm
Audio Described, 22 March, 2:30pm
t should be worn out of a badge of honour – a testament to The Years’s power to magic up emotion from simple ingredients. Bar a handful of dripping red, the abortion scene’s graphicness reverbs through collective imagination, germinating from Ernaux’s precise but velvety language (deftly adapted by Stephanie Bain) and blossoming on stage from an-all-muscles-clenched Romola Garai. Arbo has woven a gorgeous interplay of stagecraft and storytelling that doesn’t just deserve a West End transfer but wholly justifies itself as theatrical adaptation.
Each actor brings a unique quality to the table: Mohindra is curious and watchful, and Rose-Bremner joyfully spirited. Garai embodies defiance, with Findlay restoring a sense of equanimity. McKee, meanwhile, seems to charge the audience, as she embarks on an electrifying bender through the troughs and peaks of desire, grief, hilarity and hysteria.
| 1992 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
| 2025 | West End |
West End |
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